DUKE 

UNIVERSITY 


Philosophies  Ancient  and  Modern 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


RELIGIONS:  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN 

Animism.  By  Edward  Olodd,  author  of  The  Story  of  Creation. 
Pantheism.  By  James  Allanson  Picton,  author  of  The  Religion  of  the 

U niverse. 

The  Religions  Of  Ancient  China.  By  Professor  Giles,  LL.  D. , Professor 
of  Chinese  in  the  University  of  Cambridge. 

The  Religion  Of  Ancient  Greece.  By  Jane  Harrison,  Lecturer  at 
Newnhain  College,  Cambridge,  author  of  Prolegomena  to  Study  of  Greek 
Religion. 

Islam.  By  the  Rt.  Hon.  Ameer  An  Syed,  of  the  Judicial  Committee  of  His 
Majesty’s  Privy  Council,  author  of  The  Spirit  of  Islam  and  Ethics  of  Islam. 
Magic  and  Fetishism.  By  Dr.  A.  C.  Haddon,  F.R.S.,  Lecturer  on 
Ethnology  at  Cambridge  University. 

The  Religion  Of  Ancient  Egypt.  By  Professor  W.  M.  Flinders  Petrie, 
F.R.S. 

The  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria.  By  Theophilds  G.  Pinches, 

late  of  the  British  Museum. 

Early  Buddhism.  By  Professor  Rhys  Davids,  LL.D.,  late  Secretary  of 
The  Royal  Asiatic  Society. 

Hinduism.  By  Dr.  L.  D.  Barnett,  of  the  Department  of  Oriental  Printed 
Books  and  MSS.,  British  Museum. 

Scandinavian  Religion.  By  William  a.  Craigie,  Joint  Editor  of  the 

Oxford  English  Dictionary. 

Celtic  Religion.  By  Professor  Anwyl,  Professor  of  Welsh  at  University 
College,  Aberystwyth. 

The  Mythology  of  Ancient  Britain  and  Ireland  By  Charles 
Squire,  author  of  The  Mythology  of  the  British  Islands. 

Judaism.  By  Israel  Abrahams,  Lecturer  in  Talmudic  Literature  in  Cam- 
bridge University,  author  of  Jewish  Life  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  Religion  of  Ancient  Rome.  By  Cyril  Bailey,  M.A. 

Shinto,  The  Ancient  Religion  of  Japan.  By  W.  G.  Aston,  C.  M.  G. 
The  Religion  of  Ancient  Mexico  and  Peru.  By  Lewis  Spence,  M.A. 
Early  Christianity.  By  S.  B.  Black,  Professor  at  M ‘Gill  University. 

The  Psychological  Origin  and  Nature  of  Religion.  By  Professor 
J.  H.  Leuba. 

The  Religion  of  Ancient  Palestine.  By  Stanley  a.  Cook. 


PHILOSOPHIES 

Early  Greek  Philosophy.  By  A.  W.  Benn,  author  of  The  Philosophy  of 

Greece,  Rationalism,  in  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

Stoicism.  By  Professor  St.  George  Stock,  author  of  Deductive  Logic, 
editor  of  tho  Apology  of  Plato,  etc. 

Plato.  By  Professor  A.  E.  Taylor,  St.  Andrews  University,  author  of 
The  Problem  of  Conduct. 

Scholasticism.  By  Father  Rickaby,  S.J. 

Hobbes.  By  Professor  A.  E.  Taylor. 

Locke.  By  Professor  Alexander,  of  Owens  College. 

Comte  and  Mill.  By  T.  Whittakeb,  author  of  The  Neoplatoniste  Apollo- 
nius of  Tyana  and  other  Essays. 

Herbert  Spencer.  By  W.  H.  Hudson,  author  of  An  Introduction  to 
Spencer's  Philosophy. 

Schopenhauer.  By  T.  Whittaker. 

Berkeley.  By  Professor  Campbell  Fraser,  D.C.L.,  LL.D. 

Swedenborg.  By  Dr.  Sew  all  . 

Nietzsche : His  Life  and  Works.  By  Anthony  M.  Ludovioi. 

Epicurus.  By  A.  E.  Taylor. 

Bergson.  By  Joseph  Solomon. 

Rationalism.  By  J.  M.  Robertson. 

Pragmatism.  By  D.  L.  Murray. 

William  James.  By  H.  V.  Knox. 


EARLY  GREEK 

«\  

PHILOSOPHY 


By 

ALFRED  WILLIAM  BENN,  B.A. 


NEW  YORK 

DODGE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

214-220  EAST  23RD  STREET 


iW, 


FOREWORD 

References  to  authorities,  except  of  the  most 
general  kind,  are  precluded  by  the  plan  of  the 
Series  to  which  this  Primer  belongs.  It  is,  there- 
fore, as  well  for  me  to  mention  that  I have  gone 
to  the  original  sources  for  my  materials.  The 
admirable  work  of  Hermann  Diels,  Fragmente 
der  Vorsokratiker,  Bd.  i.,  Berlin,  1906,  has  been 
most  helpful  for  the  prse-Sophistie  philosophers. 
As  regards  the  interpretation  of  early  Greek 
philosophy  I have  found  no  reason  to  depart 
from  the  views  given  in  my  Philosophy  of  Greece 
(1898).  At  the  same  time  I wish  it  to  be  under- 
stood that,  in  my  opinion,  the  very  scanty  in- 
formation at  our  disposal  permits  no  more  than 
a conjectural  interpretation  of  what  the  Greek 
philosophers  from  Thales  to  Socrates  really 
taught.  And  it  is  only  fit  that  the  beginner 
should  be  told  as  much  on  his  first  introduction 
to  the  subject.  The  great  thing  is  that  he  should 
become  interested  enough  in  these  uncertainties 
to  think  that  the  time  spent  on  them  has  not 
been  thrown  away.  A.  W.  B. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2016 


https://archive.org/details/earlygreekphilos01benn 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGB 

i.  The  School  of  Miletus 1 

ii.  The  First  Metaphysicians  ....  24 

hi.  The  Analytical  Philosophers  ...  55 

iv.  The  Sophists 83 

v.  Socrates 100 


Works  bearing  on  Early  Greek  Philosophy  123 
Index 125 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  SCHOOL  OF  MILETUS 

1.  The  Meaning  of  Philosophy. — It  is  related 
of  an  old  Greek  sage  that  on  being  asked  to 
explain  what  was  meant  by  philosophy  he  replied : 
Life  is  like  a public  festival.  Some  go  there  to 
buy  and  sell,  others  go  to  compete  in  the  games, 
but  a third  class  go  simply  to  look  on,  and  these 
are  the  best  of  all.  Well,  just  in  the  same  way 
most  men  are  born  slaves  to  the  pursuit  of  gain 
or  glory,  whereas  the  philosopher  freely  devotes 
himself  to  the  study  of  truth. 

This  idea  of  philosophy  as  disinterested  specu- 
lation has  been  handed  down  from  the  Greeks  to 
ourselves,  and  has  even  been  widely  popularised, 
as  common  language  seems  to  prove.  Any  one 
who  shows  a great  curiosity  about  things  in 
general,  apart  from  their  utility  to  himself,  any 
student  who,  like  the  young  Francis  Bacon,  takes 
A 


i 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


all  knowledge  for  his  province,  is  apt  to  be  called 
a philosopher;  while  conversely,  he  who  has 
gained  the  reputation  of  being  a philosopher  is 
expected  to  know  everything— not  merely  every- 
thing that  is  known  already  but  everything  that 
ever  will  be  known,  and  some  things  that  perhaps 
cannot  be  known  at  all. 

Even  popular  language,  however,  is  dimly 
conscious  of  a distinction  between  the  philosopher 
and  the  scholar.  Broadly  speaking,  the  one  is 
expected  to  know  all  about  nature,  the  other  is 
expected  to  know  all  about  history  and  literature. 
Even  his  warmest  admirers  would  hardly  have 
called  Mr.  Gladstone  a philosopher;  while  it 
might  have  excited  some  surprise  if  any  recorded 
deed  or  word  of  any  human  being  from  the 
creation  down  to  the  most  modern  times  had 
escaped  his  notice.  On  the  other  hand  it  seemed 
quite  in  character  that  the  typical  philosopher, 
Herbert  Spencer,  should  be  rather  proud  of  not 
knowing  the  date  of  something  that  happened 
three  centuries  ago ; and  that  he  should  con- 
gratulate himself  on  not  having  received  a 
classical  education. 

Among  the  Greeks  also  philosophy  was  asso- 
ciated in  a peculiar  manner  with  the  study  of 
nature  as  distinguished  from  the  study  of  history 

2 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  MILETUS 


and  literature,  which  are  more  the  subjects  of 
what  we  call  scholarship  and  erudition.  And 
this  fact  explains  how  the  word  philosophy  itself 
came  into  being.  Originally  all  men  who  were 
particularly  distinguished  for  the  extent  of  their 
knowledge — poets  among  others — went  by  the 
name  of  cocfrol,  the  nearest  English  equivalent  to 
which  is  wise,  although  wisdom  with  us  seems 
more  limited  to  knowing  what  is  useful  for  the 
conduct  of  life  than  what  a Greek  meant  by 
Sophia.  Now,  in  a relatively  simple  state  of 
society,  to  know  all  that  can  be  known  about 
literature,  history,  and  human  interests  generally 
seems  a not  impossible  or  inordinate  ambition. 
It  is  otherwise  with  nature.  True,  the  Greeks 
as  compared  with  ourselves  had  hardly  an  idea 
of  the  vastness  and  complexity  of  the  physical 
universe ; still,  such  acute  and  sincere  observers 
could  not  fail  to  perceive,  when  they  set  their 
minds  to  it,  how  infinitely  greater  is  the  world 
of  nature  than  the  world  of  man.  And  so  it 
came  about  that  those  who  took  nature  rather 
than  man  for  their  province  disclaimed  the  title 
of  wise  or  knowing  men,  modestly  preferring  to 
be  called  lovers  of  knowledge  or,  as  we  now  say, 
students,  which  is  precisely  what  is  meant  by 
philosophers. 


3 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


We  are  told  that  the  first  to  adopt  the  name 
was  the  celebrated  Pythagoras,  who  is  also 
credited  with  the  definition  of  philosophy  as 
disinterested  speculation,  quoted  at  the  beginning 
of  this  book.  But  it  seems  likely  that  both  the 
word  and  the  definition  belong  to  a somewhat 
later  age  than  that  in  which  Pythagoras  lived. 

2.  Greek  Religion. — Before  philosophy  arose, 
Greek  curiosity  about  the  origin  and  structure  of 
the  material  universe  was  satisfied  by  an  elaborate 
system  of  mythology.  It  is  still  a matter  of  dis- 
pute how  religion  first  began,  but  it  seems  to  be 
generally  agreed  that  all  the  progressive  races 
have  passed  through  a stage  in  which  their  gods 
are  conceived  as  personified  natural  objects  or 
natural  forces.  At  any  rate,  that  was  how  the 
Greeks  represented  to  themselves  the  beings  whom 
they  worshipped.  Working,  as  we  may  suppose, 
on  a mass  of  loose  and  discordant  traditions,  their 
poets  elaborated  the  figments  of  popular  religion 
into  a literary  scheme  of  such  unfading  interest 
that  an  acquaintance  with  Greek  mythology  has 
remained  part  of  a liberal  education  all  over  the 
modern  Christian  world. 

It  was  a unique  circumstance  in  the  history  of 
religion  that  the  Greek  poets  should  play  such  a 

4 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  MILETUS 


decisive  part  in  the  evolution  of  theological  belief. 
That  the  poets  were  able  to  exercise  this  com- 
manding influence  over  public  opinion  arose  from 
the  absence  among  the  Greeks  of  a priestly  caste 
or  corporation  like  those  which  dominated  the 
great  Oriental  civilisations.  Priests  as  a class 
abounded,  but  they  were  neither  united  nor 
powerful.  Each  particular  sanctuary  had  its 
priest,  claiming  special  knowledge  of  the  god  to 
whom  it  belonged,  ready  to  explain  how  the 
favour  of  that  particular  divinity  could  be  won 
or  his  anger  appeased,  able  perhaps  also  to  tell 
the  legend  of  the  sanctuary,  the  particular  cir- 
cumstances in  which  the  god  came  to  settle  at 
that  place.  And  even  in  very  ancient  times 
Greek  armies  on  a campaign  were  attended  by 
soothsayers  whom  the  generals  consulted  in 
reference  to  any  great  calamity  or  any  striking 
apparition  presumed  to  be  of  supernatural  origin. 
But  these  officials,  although  habitually  treated 
with  great  respect,  had  no  more  than  a personal 
authority;  neither  priests  nor  soothsayers  belonged 
to  an  order  possessing  the  enormous  wealth  and 
political  influence  of  the  Babylonian  or  Egyptian 
hierocracies,  or  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  mediaeval 
Europe.  Assuming  intellectual  curiosity  and 
intellectual  progress  to  be  good  things,  it  was 

5 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


fortunate  for  the  Greek  mind  that  traditional 
beliefs  had  no  stronger  support  than  the  ordinary 
conservatism  of  human  nature,  that  they  were 
not  bound  up  with  the  material  interests  of  a 
body  accustomed  to  identify  the  truth  of  their 
opinions  about  the  gods  with  the  preservation  of 
their  corporate  property. 

Greek  Mythology  in  a systematised  form  was,  as 
I have  said,  a creation  of  the  poets,  and  more  par- 
ticularly of  Homer  and  Hesiod.  With  Hesiod 
the  conception  of  the  gods  as  nature-powers  is 
quite  evident ; Homer  presents  them  more  as 
personal  beings;  but  with  him  also  evidence  of 
their  purely  physical  origin  and  nature  is  never  far 
to  seek.  Zeus  constantly  appears  as  the  cloud- 
collector,  that  is,  the  upper  heaven ; Athene  bears 
the  segis  or  cloud-shield  of  her  father  Zeus ; Apollo, 
his  son,  the  far-darter,  is  distinguished  by  the  un- 
mistakable attributes  of  a solar  deity.  And  there 
seems  to  he  a latent  consciousness,  at  least  in  what 
are  supposed  to  be  the  more  recent  portions  of 
the  Iliad,  not  only  that  the  Olympian  gods  are 
nature-powers  but  also  that  they  have  no  exist- 
ence except  as  indwelling  spirits  of  nature. 
Their  detachment  from  material  objects,  the  con- 
ception of  them  as  self-conscious  personal  beings, 
is  of  course  most  complete  when  they  are  brought 

6 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  MILETUS 


together  in  conclave  for  purposes  of  deliberation 
or  festivity.  Now  it  is  just  on  those  occasions 
that  Homer  takes  his  gods  and  goddesses  least 
seriously,  presenting  them  even  in  a ludicrous 
light,  with  a certain  sceptical  irony. 

Nature  is  not  moral ; and  the  gods  of  Greek 
poetry  are  neither  exhibited  as  themselves  models 
of  good  conduct,  nor  as  necessarily  encouraging 
good  conduct  among  mortals.  In  fact  they 
behave  as  men  and  women  might  be  expected 
to  behave  if  they  lived  for  ever  and  were  clothed 
with  irresistible  power.  Their  life  among  them- 
selves is  that  of  a dissolute  aristocracy;  their 
treatment  of  the  human  race  is  determined  by 
the  frankest  favouritism.  An  organised  priest- 
hood would  not  have  tolerated  such  undignified 
proceedings  in  the  objects  of  its  worship  as 
Homer  reports. 

At  the  same  time,  in  default  of  a priesthood — 
better  even  in  some  ways  than  a priesthood — 
public  opinion  among  the  Greeks  did  something 
to  moralise  religion.  The  gods  were  supposed  to 
govern  human  affairs;  and  rulers,  whether  real 
or  imaginary,  cannot  but  become  associated  to 
some  extent  with  ideas  of  justice.  They  became 
more  particularly  associated  with  the  keeping  of 
promises,  which  is  the  very  foundation  of  social 

7 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


order,  by  the  Greek  custom  of  invoking  them  as 
witnesses  to  oaths.  For  to  break  an  oath  which 
a god  had  witnessed  was,  as  the  Decalogue  puts 
it,  taking  his  name  in  vain — conduct  which  he 
naturally  resented.  Moreover  Zeus,  the  supreme 
god,  ‘ father  of  gods  and  men,’  was  regarded  as 
being  in  a particular  way  the  patron  of  destitute 
persons  and  of  strangers.  At  the  same  time  it 
must  not  be  supposed  that  morality  ever  became 
so  completely  identified  with  religion  in  Greece 
as  in  ancient  Israel  or  among  Christian  nations. 
And  to  the  fact  of  their  distinction  is  due  the 
constitution  of  an  independent  moral  philosophy 
by  the  early  Greek  thinkers —perhaps  also  the 
constitution  of  an  independent  physical  philo- 
sophy as  well. 

3.  The  Seven  Sages.— In  an  early  stage  of 
civilisation  people  are  saved  the  trouble  of  think- 
ing about  moral  philosophy  or  abstract  principles 
of  right  conduct  by  learning  the  laws  and  cus- 
toms of  their  land  or  tribe,  just  as  mythology 
saves  them  the  trouble  of  finding  scientific  ex- 
planations of  natural  processes.  But  where  a 
number  of  petty  states  exist  side  by  side,  each 
with  laws  of  its  own,  where  repeated  changes  of 
government  involve  the  necessity  of  making  new 

8 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  MILETUS 


laws,  above  all  wliere  the  individual  members  of 
the  community  have  so  far  emancipated  them- 
selves from  the  yoke  of  custom  as  to  exercise  a 
certain  discretion  in  the  management  of  their 
private  affairs,  there  a sort  of  moral  rationalism 
will  arise,  an  idea  that  certain  things  should  be 
done  because  they  are  good  in  themselves,  not 
because  they  are  prescribed  by  authority. 

These  conditions  were  fulfilled  to  a remarkable 
extent  in  the  Hellenic  world  during  the  first  half 
of  the  sixth  century  B.c.  The  old  patriarchal 
monarchies,  such  as  we  find  still  existing  in 
Homer’s  time,  had  given  place  to  aristocratic 
republics ; and  in  many  instances  one  of  the 
aristocrats  had  succeeded  for  a time  in  making 
himself  what  the  Greeks  called  a tyrant,  or  abso- 
lute ruler,  by  playing  off  the  people  against  the 
nobles.  Men  who  formerly  occupied  a leading- 
position  in  their  own  city  were  driven  into  exile 
and  spent  their  enforced  leisure  in  visiting  foreign 
parts  and  studying  the  varieties  of  human  life 
there  offered  to  their  observation.  A vast  exten- 
sion of  commerce  brought  the  Greek  mind  into 
vivifying  contact  with  the  great  Oriental  civilisa- 
tions and  with  the  uncivilised  inhabitants  of 
Northern  Europe.  Moreover,  the  economical 
revolution  brought  with  it  unexpected  changes 

9 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


of  fortune  and  new  valuations  of  personal  worth. 
It  came  to  be  a popular  saying  that  ‘money 
makes  the  man  ’ — long  descent  counting  for  little 
or  nothing  when  the  hereditary  magnate  had  lost 
his  paternal  estates. 

It  was  in  these  circumstances  that  a group  of 
worthies  became  widely  celebrated  under  the 
name  of  the  Seven  Sages  of  Greece.  Each  sage 
got  the  credit  of  having  originated  some  pithy 
saying  which  thenceforward  became  a current 
coin  in  the  treasure  of  popular  wisdom.  What 
strikes  us  most  about  these  adages  is  their  brevity 
and  the  abstract  wording  that  distinguishes  them 
from  the  proverbs  of  other  nations.  Some  of  them 
had  the  glory  of  being  inscribed  on  the  walls  of 
the  temple  at  Delphi ; and  two  in  particular  are 
pregnant  with  a wisdom  that  the  highest  Greek 
ethical  teaching  did  but  expand  and  apply. 
These  are,  ‘ Be  moderate,’  and  ‘ Know  thyself.’ 
To  realise  and  practise  the  duties  they  recom- 
mend was  to  possess  in  its  fulness  what  was  par 
excellence  the  Greek  virtue  of  Sophrosyne.  We 
ordinarily  render  the  word  by  Temperance;  but 
temperance  even  in  the  wide  sense  of  avoiding 
excess  in  every  direction  fails  to  convey  its  full 
meaning ; for  he  to  whom  nature  or  training  has 
given  Sophrosyne  adds  the  faculty  of  self-know- 
io 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  MILETUS 


ledge  to  the  faculty  of  self-control.  He  is  what 
artists  call  the  master  of  his  means;  he  has 
learned  what  he  can  do,  and  does  it ; something 
tells  him  how  far  he  can  go ; up  to  that  point  he 
goes,  but  not  a step  beyond. 

Opposed  to  Sophrosyne  as  the  ideal  Greek 
virtue  was  what  one  may  call  the  ideal  Greek 
vice,  in  the  sense  of  what  wise  Greeks  most 
abhorred,  that  is,  Hybris.  Literally  hybris  means 
no  more  than  excess,  and  some  trace  of  this  sig- 
nificance survives  in  our  own  word  hybrid,  used 
primarily  of  animals  that  are  a cross  between  two 
species,  thus  as  it  were  exceeding  the  limits 
assigned  to  them  by  nature.  Morally  and 
etymologically  hybris  is  also  connected  with  the 
word  outrage,  which  literally  means  no  more  than 
‘ going  beyond  ’ — that  is,  beyond  what  reason  and 
law  prescribe,  but  which  in  the  evolution  of  lan- 
guage has  come  to  mean  going  beyond  the  bounds 
of  ordinary  licence  and  crime.  The  Greeks  as  a 
dignified  and  self-respecting  people  were  pecu- 
liarly sensitive  to  all  such  transgressions,  from 
insolent  and  overhearing  language  to  acts  of 
unprovoked  and  gross  personal  violence  committed 
in  the  mere  wantonness  of  irresistible  power. 
Nature,  as  they  conceived  her,  is  bound  by  strict 
laws  of  limitation ; and  therefore  the  gods,  being 
ii 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


nature-powers,  showed  themselves  particularly 
hostile  to  hybris ; and  the  poetic  interpretations 
of  mythology  all  went  to  show  that  the  old 
kingly  races  had  perished  by  drawing  down 
divine  vengeance  on  their  parricidal  crimes  or  on 
their  incestuous  loves.  In  historic  times  the 
same  feeling  was  particularly  directed  against 
the  outrageous  abuses  of  power  committed  by 
tyrants  on  the  one  side  and  by  unbridled 
democracies  on  the  other.  As  a mean  between 
these  two  extremes,  aristocracy  found  most 
favour  with  thinking  men ; while  if  a democracy 
had  become  firmly  established,  they  looked  to 
the  middle  class  as  the  best  guardian  of  social 
order  against  the  turbulence  of  the  nobles  or  of 
the  people. 

4.  The  Reign  of  Law. — I have  said  that  the 
Greeks  conceived  nature  as  bound  by  a law  of 
limitation.  This  conception  is  so  closely  con- 
nected with  their  habits  of  political  self-govern- 
ment, with  the  fact  that  their  cities  were 
constituted  as  free  republics,  each  jealously 
guarding  its  independence  against  all  the  others, 
that  we  cannot  tell  which  came  first,  the  political 
organisation  or  the  creed.  At  any  rate,  that  their 
republican  habits  led  to  the  philosophical  idea  of 


12 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  MILETUS 


nature  as  a self-sufficing  orderly  universe,  de- 
veloped on  impersonal  lines,  undisturbed  by  the 
arbitrary  volitions  of  supernatural  beings,  seems 
likely.  lAn  Oriental,  brought  up  on  traditions  of 
personal  government,  could  not  easily  grasp  that 
idea,  could  not  but  conceive  the  material  world 
as  subject  like  himself  to  the  will  of  an  irrespon- 
sible master,  And  even  the  few  self-governing 
Semitic  communities  remained  subject  in  religion 
to  priesthoods  that  preserved  the  tradition  of  a 
celestial  autocracy  intact.  The  Greeks,  as  we  saw, 
had  no  such  priesthood,  and  therefore  their  high 
intelligence  was  left  free  to  work  out  a truly 
scientific  philosophy  of  nature. 

In  positive  science,  on  the  other  hand,  Greece 
was  much  behind  the  great  Oriental  theocracies. 
These  had  long  promoted  the  study  of  arithmetic, 
geometry,  and  astronomy,  although  more  as 
adjuncts  to  magic  and  religion  than  from  pure 
speculative  curiosity.  Such  curiosity  was,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  characteristic  note  of  philosophy ; 
and  it  is  a signal  merit  of  the  early  Greek 
thinkers  that  they  should  have  known  how  to 
carry  away  what  was  really  valuable  in  Eastern 
learning  while  discarding  nearly  the  whole  of  the 
superstition  in  which  it  was  embedded. 


13 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

5.  Thales. — Among  the  seven  sages  of  Greece, 
Solon  of  Athens  has  remained  through  all  ages 
the  most  celebrated  for  practical  genius ; and 
many  who  would  be  puzzled  to  tell  when  or 
where  he  lived  have  heard  of  him  as  an  ideally 
wise  man.  To  those,  however,  who  are  not  study- 
ing the  history  of  politics  but  the  history  of 
thought,  the  most  interesting  of  the  whole  band 
is  not  Solon  but  Thales  of  Miletus,  the  founder  of 
Greek  and  indeed  of  all  European  philosophy. 
It  is  no  accident  that  this  wonderful  man  should 
have  been  a Milesian.  At  the  time  when  he 
flourished,  that  is  to  say,  early  in  the  sixth  century 
b.c.,  JMiletus  was  the  most  prosperous  of  the 
Ionian  cities  in  Asia  Mfnor,  and  the  Ionians  stood 
intellectually  at  the  head  of  the  whole  Hellenic 
race,  the  furthest  removed  from  primitive  barbar- 
ism, the  least  exposed  to  contagion  from  the 
contemporary  barbarism  that  surrounded  Hellas 
like  a sea  on  every  side.  We  know  thatf  religious 
scepticism  began  at  a comparatively  early  date 
among  the  Ionian  Greeks,  for  those  parts  of  the 
Homeric  poems  where  the  gods  are  exhibited  in  a 
rather  ridiculous  light,  although  among  the  latest 
additions  to  the  original  epic,  are  still  very 
ancient,  and  these  are  evidently  the  work  of  an 
Ionian  hand.  It  only  remained  to  substitute  a 
14 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  MILETUS 


seriousj^entific  explanation  of  the  world  for  the 
discredited  Olympian  mythology,  and  this  was 
first  attempted  in  the  school  of  Miletus.  [ 

Thales  was  not  a writer  of  books,  and  what  we 
know  about  him  comes  from  reports  of  which  the 
earliest  cannot  be  dated  nearer  than  half  a 
century  after  his  death,  while  the  most  important 
information  of  all  comes  from  Aristotle,  who  lived 
not  much  less  than  two  and  a half  centuries  later 
than  his  time.  But  it  all  seems  credible  enough  ; 
and  on  putting  these  scattered  notices  together 
we  reach  the  conception  of  Thales  as  a true 
master  of  those  who  know,  combining  great 
practical  sagacity  with  a firm  grasp  of  scientific 
realities,  so  far  as  they  were  then  accessible,  and 
an  instinctive  feeling  out  after  that  universality 
which  alone  can  lift  positive  science  to  the 
supreme  heights  of  synthetic  philosophy.  He 
is  credited  with  having  discovered  certain  ele- 
mentary propositions  of  geometry : that  the 

angles  at  the  base  of  an  isosceles  triangle  are 
equal,  and  that  if  two  straight  lines  intersect  the 
opposite  angles  are  equal.  Any  one  can  see  by 
looking  at  the  figures  that  the  fact  is  so ; per- 
haps Thales  first  proved  that  it  must  be  so.  And 
he  is  also  stated  on  good  authority  to  have  pre- 
dicted an  eclipse  of  the  sun  which  the  calculations 
15 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


of  modern  astronomy  show  to  have  occurred  in 
the  year  585  B.c.  Apparently  Thales  owed  his 
place  among  the  Seven  Sages  to  that  lucky  fore- 
cast. I say  lucky,  because  at  that  time 
astronomers  knew  no  more  than  that  eclipses 
recur  at  certain  intervals;  they  were  unable  to 
tell  whether  a particular  eclipse  would  be  visible 
on  a certain  part  of  the  earth’s  surface  or  not. 
Thales,  no  doubt,  ascertained  by  studying  the 
tables  drawn  up  by  Babylonian  astrologers  that  a 
solar  eclipse  would  be  visible  somewhere  or  other 
that  year.  By  good  fortune  not  only  was  it 
visible  in  Asia  Minor  but  it  also  fell  on  the  day 
of  a great  battle  between  the  Lydians  and  the 
Medes,  so  alarming  the  combatants  that  they 
separated  and  made  peace. 

So  much  for  Thales  as  a man  of  science.  As  a 
philosopher,  he  taught  that  water  is  the  principle 
of  all  things,  or  what  we  should  call  the  funda- 
mental element.  It  was  a Semitic  idea,  quite 
familiar  to  us  from  the  earlier  chapters  of  Genesis, 
that  the  earth  is  surrounded  by  water  on  all  sides, 
being  protected  against  an  inflooding  of  the  great 
deep  below  by  its  own  solid  structure,  and  against 
irruptions  from  above  by  the  solid  vault  of  heaven 
— a notion  whence  our  word  ‘ firmament  ’ is 
derived.  In  like  manner  modern  science  con- 
16 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  MILETUS 


ceives  the  earth  and  all  the  heavenly  bodies  as 
surrounded  by  a vast  sea  of  ether,  the  medium  by 
whose  pulsations  light,  heat,  electricity,  and  per- 
haps even  gravitation  are  constituted  and  trans- 
mitted. Now  the  idea  has  been  gaining  ground 
for  some  years  past  that  matter  is  made  out  of 
ether,  was  originally  evolved  from  ethereal  par- 
ticles or  pulses,  and  is  perhaps  destined  to 
resolve  itself  into  them  again.  And  it  would 
seem  that  Thales  came  to  the  same  conclusion 
about  the  derivation  of  all  things  from  water  by  a 
more  summary  process  than  modern  science 
would  approve  of,  but  in  a spirit  closely  akin  to 
that  of  our  own  most  advanced  physical  investi- 
gators, the  generalising,  assimilating  spirit  so 
characteristic  of  philosophy  in  every  age. 

Another  recorded  saying  of  the  Milesian 
pioneer  points  in  the  same  direction  : ‘ All  things 
are  full  of  gods.’  Here,  at  first  sight,  we  seem  to 
have  the  old  mythology  back  again,  to  be  no 
further  advanced  than  Hesiod  was  when  he 
represented  the  great  cosmic  powers  as  personal 
beings,  marrying,  begetting  children,  and  quarrel- 
ling with  one  another.  If,  however,  we  take  the 
words  in  connection  with  the  general  drift  of  his 
teaching,  they  acquire  another  meaning.  Had 
the  citizens  of  a Greek  republic  been  addressed 
B 17 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


as  so  many  kings  they  would  none  the  less  have 
represented  a realm  of  law  and  order  as  against 
the  personal  despotisms  of  the  East ; and  so, 
when  Thales  said  that  there  was  a god  in  amber 
or  a god  in  the  loadstone,  he  really  meant  that 
the  drifting  cloud  and  the  falling  thunderbolt 
belonged  to  the  same  world  of  natural  occur- 
rences as  the  phenomena,  then  first  beginning  to 
be  scientifically  observed,  of  magnetism  and 
electricity. 

6.  Anaximander. — I have  said  that  Thales 
probably  learned  what  astronomy  he  knew  from 
Babylon,  and  that  his  view  of  the  relation 
between  earth  and  water  was  Semitic.  Now  it  is 
certain  that  the  philosopher  was  not  of  pure 
Greek  race;  and  one  rather  doubtful  pedigree 
even  makes  him  belong  to  a Phoenician,  that  is 
to  say,  a Semitic  family.  There  seem  to  be  very 
insufficient  grounds  for  the  belief;  but  were  it 
true,  philosophy  would  remain  a product  of  Euro- 
pean not  of  Asiatic  culture,  while  the  fertilising 
stimulus  that  first  started  Greek  thought  seems 
to  have  come  not  from  any  Semitic  source  but 
from  Egypt.  At  any  rate  the  beginnings  of 
speculation  at  Miletus  coincide  with  the  perma- 
nent establishment  of  a Milesian  colony  at 
18 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  MILETUS 


Naucratis  in  the  Delta,  a concession  due  to 
the  liberality  of  the  very  enlightened  Pharaoh, 
Amasis. 

With  Anaximander,  the  pupil  of  Thales,  and 
like  him  a Milesian  (born  610  b.c.),  Ave  already 
stand  on  more  solid  ground.  This  marvellous 
thinker  may  be  called  the  second  founder  of 
philosophy,  for  he  first  gave  it  literary  expres- 
sion in  a book  of  Avhich  some  fragments  still 
survive.  According  to  him  the  primary  sub- 
stance Avhence  all  things  arise  is  not  water,  nor, 
indeed,  any  form  of  matter  known  to  us,  but  an 
infinite  something  without  limit  in  space  or  time. 
Out  of  this  all  the  Avorlds  are  evolved  by  a neces- 
sary process  of  succession,  and  into  it  they  return 
when  their  fated  term  of  existence  is  completed. 
Only  so,  as  Anaximander  thinks,  can  the  eternal 
laws  of  justice  be  fulfilled.  Ho  single  combina- 
tion of  material  conditions  among  the  boundless 
possibilities  of  existence  has  a right  to  continue 
for  ever,  blocking  the  way  that  others  also  are 
waiting  to  traverse  in  their  turn.  Here  we  have 
the  cardinal  Greek  virtue  of  Sophrosyne,  the 
Ionian  rule  of  self-limitation,  raised  to  the  dignity 
of  a universal  law,  determining  the  life  and  death 
of  things  in  themselves. 

There  is  no  room  in  Anaximander’s  system  for 
19 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


the  immortal  gods  of  Homer ; each  world  in  the 
infinite  succession  of  worlds  is  a god  indeed,  but 
a god  destined  to  perish  like  ourselves. 

Like  Thales,  Anaximander  has  a place  in  the 
history  of  science  no  less  than  in  the  history  of 
philosophy — perhaps  even  a greater  place.  We 
are  told  that  he  made  the  first  map ; and  that  he 
conceived  the  earth  as  hanging  unsupported  in 
space,  although  he  did  not  conceive  it  as  a globe 
but  as  a cylinder.  This,  however,  marks  a con- 
siderable advance  on  his  master’s  view  of  the 
earth  as  a flat  disk  floating  on  the  water. 
According  to  him  the  heavenly  bodies  are  vast 
revolving  hoops  of  fire  pierced  with  circular 
apertures  which  give  us  the  notion  of  them  as 
luminous  disks.  And  he  anticipated  the  nebular 
hypothesis  so  far  as  to  teach  that  these  hoops 
were  evolved  out  of  the  formless  Infinite  by  a 
process  of  gradual  differentiation. 

Evolution  was  an  idea  familiar  to  all  the  early 
Greek  philosophers.  It  presents,  indeed,  no 
difficulties  to  men  at  a much  more  primitive 
stage  of  thought  than  theirs.  We  ourselves  have 
grown  up  gradually  from  very  small  beginnings, 
and  the  natural  thing  is  to  conceive  the  world 
as  having  been  developed  in  the  same  fashion. 
Moreover,  primitive  folk  are  accustomed  to  look 
20 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  MILETUS 


on  the  transformation  of  men  into  animals  or 
plants,  and  of  animals  or  plants  into  men,  as 
quite  an  ordinary  occurrence.  It  is  not,  there- 
fore, surprising  to  find  Anaximander  saying  that 
land  animals  were  originally  developed  from 
aquatic  or  fishlike  animals,  and  that  ‘man  was 
born  from  animals  of  a different  species.’  The 
remarkable  thing  is  the  reason  he  gives  for  his 
theory.  ‘ While  other  animals  quickly  find  food 
for  themselves,  man  alone  requires  a prolonged 
period  of  suckling.  Hence  had  he  been  origin- 
ally such  as  he  is  now,  he  could  never  have 
survived/ 

7.  Anaximenes. — We  shall  see  presently  what 
causes  brought  the  genuinely  scientific  movement 
of  the  Milesian  school  to  an  end.  Before  expir- 
ing it  produced  one  more  great  representative 
in  Anaximenes,  the  successor  of  Anaximander. 
With  less  speculative  daring,  he  seems  to  show  a 
closer  observation  of  fact.  For  him  also  there 
is  a primal  substance  of  infinite  extent,  in  which 
and  from  which  all  finite  things  have  their  being. 
That  elementary  substance  is  Air,  the  air  that  we 
breathe,  our  very  life.  To  use  his  own  words, 
‘ that  which  is  our  soul  and  constitutive  principle, 
also  holds  the  universe  together/  A philosopher 
21 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


who  so  expressed  himself  now,  or  indeed  at  any 
time  after  Plato,  would  be  properly  called  a 
materialist.  But  we  can  hardly  apply  the  name 
to  Anaximenes.  Materialism  and  spiritualism 
are  a correlated  couple.  Each  term  first  becomes 
intelligible  as  the  antithesis  and  contradiction  of 
the  other. 

We  have  better  grounds  for  crediting  Anaxi- 
menes with  what  would  now  be  called  a me- 
chanical theory  of  nature,  as  distinguished  from 
what,  by  another  modernism,  may  be  described 
as  the  ‘ specific  energies  ’ or  ‘ occult  qualities  ’ of 
his  predecessor.  Anaximander  taught  that  such 
antithetical  pairs  as  wet  and  dry,  hot  and  cold, 
etc.,  were  separated  out  or  ‘ differentiated  ’ from 
the  homogeneous  Infinite  where  they  had  previ- 
ously existed  in  a latent  state.  To  Anaximenes, 
on  the  other  hand,  heat  and  cold,  like  the  solid, 
liquid,  and  gaseous  states  of  matter,  were  all 
merely  so  many  products  of  rarefaction  and  con- 
densation. Air  squeezed  together  became  cloudy 
vapour,  under  additional  pressure  vapour  turned 
to  rain,  and  rain  by  the  same  process  to  vegetable 
and  animal  substances,  which  ultimately  pass 
into  air  again.  Observing  with  perfect  accuracy 
that  heat  and  cold  are  somehow  connected  with 
dilatation  and  compression,  this  early  precursor 


22 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  MILETUS 

of  Bacon  unfortunately  reversed  the  real  relation 
by  supposing  that  air  is  chilled  by  being  con- 
densed and  warmed  by  being  expanded.  And 
that  is  why,  says  Anaximenes,  we  press  our  lips 
together  when  we  want  to  blow  cold,  and  open 
them  when  we  want  to  blow  hot.  In  studying 
the  errors  of  such  a man  we  must  remember 
that  to  ask  questions  and  answer  them  wrongly 
helps  progress  incomparably  more  than  not  to  ask 
them  at  all. 

Good  care  is  taken,  says  a German  proverb, 
that  the  trees  shall  not  grow  into  the  sky. 
Milesian  philosophy,  with  its  splendid  promise 
of  positive  knowledge,  perished  after  the  third 
generation,  first  choked  by  rank  undergrowths  of 
superstition,  then  uprooted  by  earthquake  and 
storm.  But  the  same  causes  that  put  an  end 
to  speculation  in  one  part  of  Hellas  favoured 
its  rise  and  propagation  from  new  centres  of 
intelligence  elsewhere.  It  was  just  this  multipli- 
cation of  intellectual  centres,  leading  to  the  cross- 
fertilisation of  mental  growths,  that  gave  the 
Greek  genius  such  an  extraordinary  productivity, 
a productivity  of  which  the  world’s  history 
affords  no  second  example. 


23 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 

1.  The  Religious  Revival. — In  all  times  and 
countries  the  philosophy  of  a nation  has  been 
intimately  related  to  its  religious  beliefs.  And  if 
this  is  true  of  modern  European  thought  which 
has  Greek  thought  to  build  on  as  an  independent 
foundation,  much  more  is  it  true  of  the  original 
Greek  thought  which  started  without  any  such 
inheritance  from  the  past.  Now  it  is  a remarkable 
fact  that  Greek  philosophy  as  it  goes  on  evolving 
seems  to  come  into  closer  and  closer  connection 
with  popular  religious  belief,  with  the  current 
pagan  theology.  Among  ourselves,  as  is  well 
known,  rather  the  reverse  process  obtains.  Since 
the  Middle  Ages  speculation  has  tended  on  the 
whole  to  break  away  from  dogmatic  trammels. 
Fully  to  set  out  the  causes  of  what  seems  to  us  so 
singular  an  inversion  of  the  natural  order  would 
require  a volume ; and  indeed  the  problem  is  one 
24 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


that  classical  scholarship  has  not  yet  completely 
elucidated ; but  a few  summary  indications  will  be 
found  helpful  for  the  intelligence  of  what  is  to  follow. 

The  Greeks  had  not  one  religion  but  two 
religions ; or  rather  they  had  many  religions, 
the  objects  of  which  grouped  themselves  under 
two  general  headings,  according  as  their  home 
was  in  the  heavens  or  under  the  earth.  We 
speak  of  the  one  class  as  Olympian,  of  the  other 
class  as  Chthonian  deities.  The  Olympian  gods 
— typified  above  all  by  the  great  triad,  Zeus, 
Apollo,  and  Athene, — are  associated  in  a peculiar 
way  with  the  bright  upper  sky  and  the  sun; 
apart  from  their  human  interests  they  enjoy  un- 
changing and  immortal  felicity.  The  Chthonian 
gods  are  associated  in  the  first  instance  with  the 
dead,  and  their  shadowy  chief,  Pluto,  exists  only 
as  a personification  of  the  grave ; but  they  are 
also  conceived  in  a more  concrete  way  as  powers 
of  vegetation  and  growth,  of  what  is  sent  up  from 
the  underworld  to  the  earth’s  surface,  whether 
plants  or  springing  waters;  and  these  find  their 
most  characteristic  representatives  in  Demeter 
(literally  Mother  Earth),  her  daughter  Perse- 
phone, and  Dionysus,  originally  a god  of  all 
subterranean  springs,  but  tending  to  become 
specialised  as  a wine-god. 

25 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

From  their  great  prominence  in  Greek  classic 
literature,  the  Olympian  gods  have  come  to  figure 
in  our  imagination  as  the  proper  objects  of  Greek 
worship  and  the  centres  of  Greek  religious  belief. 
It  seems  likely  that  the  religion  of  the  higher 
classes,  whose  thoughts  and  feelings  classic  litera- 
ture above  all  expresses,  was  in  fact  Olympian, 
turning  itself  by  preference  to  the  bright  and 
immortal  aspects  of  nature.  On  the  other  hand 
it  was  to  be  expected  that  the  vast  labouring 
population,  whose  interests  lay  especially  in 
agriculture,  should  turn  by  preference  to  the 
Chthonian  gods,  to  the  givers  of  corn,  and  wine, 
and  oil.  These  too  were  more  human,  more 
sympathetic  than  the  Olympians  in  that  they 
shared  man’s  mortality  and  grief.  Every  year 
Demeter,  the  Earth  goddess,  mourns  for  her 
daughter  Persephone,  the  flower-crowned  spring, 
carried  off  by  the  King  of  Death  to  share  his 
subterranean  throne.  Every  year  Dionysus,  the 
vine-god,  gives  his  body  to  be  torn  to  pieces 
and  mangled  by  the  vintage  and  the  wine- press. 
Nor  did  the  process  of  assimilation  end  here. 
From  the  idea  of  a dying  god  came  forth  the 
idea  of  an  undying  life  for  man.  Persephone 
returns  to  her  mother  every  spring  in  a resur- 
rection of  leaves  and  flowers.  And  by  a still 
26 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


more  significant  symbolism  Dionysus,  the  twice- 
born,  first  from  the  fruitful  vine,  then  from  the 
wine  vat,  celebrates  a joyful  immortality  in  that 
life-giving  draught  which  gladdens  the  hearts  of 
gods  and  men.  Thus  for  mortal  men  also  the  grave 
came  to  be  thought  of  as  the  gateway  to  another 
existence — though  not  necessarily  to  an  existence 
of  everlasting  joy.  For  as  it  is  the  very  law  of 
life  that  death  should  be  dreaded,  if  we  cease  to 
fear  death  as  the  end  of  all  our  happiness  here 
we  must  learn  to  fear  it  as  opening  the  possibility 
of  endless  unhappiness  hereafter. 

It  is  an  economic  law  that  morality  should  be 
more  prized  and  more  practised  among  the  lower 
than  among  the  higher  classes  of  society.  For 
justice  is  the  appeal  of  the  poor  against  the 
tyranny  of  the  rich,  and  temperance  is  the 
guardian  of  the  poor  against  the  vicious  self- 
indulgence  and  extravagance  which  are  so  much 
more  speedily  fatal  to  them  than  to  the  rich. 
Hence  we  find  a distinctly  more  moral  tone  in 
Hesiod,  who  addressed  himself  to  the  hard- 
working rural  population,  than  in  Homer,  who 
addressed  himself  to  the  idle  and  warlike  aris- 
tocracy. Thus  when  a belief  in  human  immor- 
tality came  to  be  developed  out  of  the  Chthonian 
religion  it  was  utilised  by  the  superior  moral 
2 7 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


feeling  of  the  industrial  classes  as  an  additional 
sanction  for  the  laws  of  right  and  wrong.  A 
state  of  future  rewards  and  punishments  is 
unknown  to  the  authors  of  the  Iliad,  but  we  find 
a scheme  of  retributive  justice  after  death  set  out 
in  what  critics  suppose  to  be  a late  addition  to 
the  Odyssey. 

It  is  a common  experience  to  find  the  belief  in 
another  world  utilised  by  a particular  class  to 
further  their  own  interests  by  working  on  the 
superstitious  imagination  of  the  vulgar ; and  such 
seems  to  have  been  also  the  case  in  Greece.  An 
elaborate  system  of  ritualistic  observances  took 
the  place  of  righteous  conduct  as  a passport  to 
the  dwellings  of  the  blest ; and  bloody  sacrifices 
came  into  high  repute  as  a means  for  expiating 
real  or  imaginary  guilt.  Such  phenomena  as 
Revivalism  and  Salvationism  were  not  without 
their  counterpart  in  old  Hellas;  only  there  the 
first  stimulus  to  these  tumultuous  manifestations 
of  religious  feeling  seems  to  have  been  imported 
from  among  the  barbarous  Thracians  or  from 
the  rot-heaps  of  decaying  Semitic  civilisation. 

Two  general  causes,  subsequently  reinforced  by 
a third,  operated  in  the  sixth  century  b.c.  to  set 
on  foot  a great  religious  movement,  beginning 
with  the  lower  strata  of  Greek  society  and  spread- 
28 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


ing  upward  till  it  absorbed  tlie  highest.  A great 
wave  of  Asiatic  conquest,  started  long  before, 
but  only  becoming  formidable  to  the  West  when 
it  came  under  the  energetic  direction  of  Persia, 
brought  with  it  a general  sense  of  insecurity 
and  terror  most  favourable  to  religious  excite- 
ment. Simultaneously  with  this  the  growth  of 
democracy  in  the  Greek  city-states  gave  a new 
prominence  to  the  popular  faiths  whose  nature 
has  just  been  analysed,  imposing  them  even  on 
the  higher  classes  and  endangering  the  old  aristo- 
cratic ideal  of  Sophrosyne,  that  is,  self-limitation 
and  self-control. 

The  Ionians  had  always  been  a colonising  race, 
and  under  the  stress  of  Persian  conquest  their 
migratory  tendency  received  an  additional  im- 
pulse. New  settlements  were  founded  in 
Southern  Italy,  and  some  of  these  became  the 
homes  of  philosophic  schools  marked  by  extra- 
ordinary originality  of  thought,  but  somevThat 
lacking  in  the  sanity  and  balance  so  character- 
istic of  Ionian  speculation  in  its  first  beginnings, 
steadied  as  these  were  by  the  traditions  of  an 
immemorial  civilisation. 

2.  The  Pythagorean  School.  — Considerable 
uncertainty  prevails  with  regard  to  the  chrono- 
29 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


logy  of  the  Italian  Schools,  and  our  authorities 
hold  conflicting  views  about  their  origin  and 
mutual  relations.  Pythagoras,  whom  for  con- 
venience we  may  take  first,  is  an  especially 
problematic  figure.  There  is  good  contemporary 
evidence  for  the  fact  of  his  existence;  but  in 
what  Ave  are  told  about  him  the  historical 
element  (if  any)  is  not  easily  distinguishable  from 
the  mythical.  To  be  made  the  subject  of  marvel- 
lous legends — or  inventions — is  usually  the  fate 
of  prophets  or  religious  teachers  rather  than  of 
philosophers;  and  in  fact  there  is  good  reason 
to  believe  that  Pythagoras  belonged  to  both 
orders,  to  the  lovers  of  simple  knowledge — for 
whom,  as  will  be  remembered,  he  is  said  to  have 
invented  that  incomparable  name  philosopher — 
and  to  those  others  who  also  claim  truth  for  their 
heritage,  but  with  a higher  warrant  than  mere 
reason  can  give,  to  the  class  Avhom  we  generally 
call  mystics. 

According  to  the  best  of  our  information  the 
life  of  Pythagoras  extended  through  the  greater 
part  of  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  and  ended  with  its 
close.  Thus  he  came  under  the  double  influence 
of  the  scientific  movement  started  by  Thales, 
and  of  the  great  religious  movement  knoAvn  as 
Orphicism.  Orpheus  was  a mythical  personage 
30 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 

who  stood  godfather  to  a vast,  spurious  literature, 
the  scriptures  of  a new  Salvationist  method,  the 
worship  of  a dying  god,  and  the  hope  of  a blessed 
hereafter.  Pythagoras  associated  this  belief  in 
immortality  with  the  old  Oriental  doctrine  of 
metempsychosis.  He  or  his  disciples  taught  that 
the  eternal  soul  passed  through  a series  of 
reincarnations,  rising  or  falling  in  the  scale  of 
existence  according  as  each  earthly  life  had  or 
had  not  been  spent  in  accordance  with  the  law 
of  purity.  As  a help  towards  leading  the  perfect 
life  Pythagoras  founded  a religious  order  to  which 
women  were  admitted  equally  with  men.  At 
what  period  the  sage  began  his  social  experiments 
is  not  known.  Perhaps  an  attempt  to  set  up  the 
order  in  his  native  island  of  Samos  may  have 
excited  the  wrath  of  Polycrates,  its  brilliant  and 
successful  tyrant.  At  any  rate,  Pythagoras  fled 
from  Samos  and  settled  in  Croton,  an  Achsean 
colony  on  the  Gulf  of  Tarentum.  There,  under 
his  direction,  the  order  flourished  for  many  years 
until,  like  some  more  modern  churches,  it  tried 
to  obtain  political  supremacy  in  alliance  with  the 
aristocratic  faction.  A popular  tumult,  in  which 
according  to  some  accounts  Pythagoras  himself 
perished,  put  an  end  to  the  reforming  movement 
as  an  organised  community.  But  as  a ferment  of 
3i 


EARLY  GREER  PHILOSOPHY 


thought  the  school  lived  on,  exercising  an  un- 
paralleled influence  on  the  whole  later  course  of 
Greek  philosophy,  down  to  the  final  extinction 
of  paganism  under  the  Roman  Empire. 

3.  Pythagorean  Science  and  Philosophy. — 

‘Much  learning  does  not  give  intelligence,  or 
Pythagoras  would  have  possessed  it.’  So,  with 
his  usual  scornfulness,  wrote  a somewhat  later 
sage,  the  celebrated  Heracleitus.  And  as  a 
general  principle  the  sarcasm  is  not  without 
truth,  as  many  a modern  instance  teaches.  But 
it  was  not  true  of  Pythagoras.  If  tradition  may 
be  trusted  he  had  not  only  mastered  all  the 
knowledge  of  his  age  but  had  enriched  it  with 
important  discoveries.  He  is  said  to  have 
demonstrated  the  most  fruitful  proposition  of 
elementary  geometry,  the  theorem  that  the 
square  on  the  base  of  a right-angled  triangle 
equals  the  sum  of  the  squares  on  the  two 
containing  sides.  And  he  is  also  credited  with 
the  discovery  that  the  height  of  notes  on  the 
musical  scale  is  determined  by  the  proportionate 
lengths  of  the  chords  by  whose  vibration  they 
are  produced,  so  that  a vibrating  string  of  half 
the  length  produces  a note  an  octave  higher. 
How  much  of  the  astronomy  peculiar  to  his 
32 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


school  goes  back  to  its  first  founder  we  cannot 
tell.  But  he  seems  to  have  started  that  daring 
course  of  speculation  which  resulted  between 
two  and  three  centuries  after  his  time  in  the 
theory,  revived  by  Copernicus  from  Greek  science, 
that  the  earth  revolves  on  her  own  axis  and  is 
carried  with  the  planets  round  the  sun  as  the 
central  orb  of  the  system  to  which  we  belong. 

No  European  teacher  has  ever  been  so  com- 
pletely identified  with  his  school  as  Pythagoras; 
and  if  this  fact  precludes  any  accurate  distinction 
between  the  original  contributions  of  the  master 
to  science  and  the  subsequent  additions  made  by 
his  disciples,  it  makes  the  task  of  determining 
what  was  individual  to  him  in  philosophy  almost 
impossible.  In  after  ages  the  central  Pythagorean 
doctrine  undoubtedly  was  that  all  things  are 
made  out  of  number.  Not,  be  it  observed,  that 
numbers  or,  more  generally,  mathematical  rela- 
tions constitute  the  very  soul  of  nature,  but  that 
number  is,  like  the  Water  of  Thales  or  the  Air 
of  Anaximenes,  the  very  stuff  of  which  the  world 
is  made.  But  this  seems  too  abstract  a theory, 
not  to  say  too  subtle  and  elaborate,  for  so  primitive 
a philosopher  as  Pythagoras  himself  to  have  con- 
structed, even  in  outline;  nor  do  we  find  any 
reference  to  it  among  his  immediate  successors. 
C 33 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

What  we  do  find  them  referring  to  as  a current 
notion  is  the  system  of  opposites,  the  idea  that 
the  universe  is  built  up  out  of  antithetical  couples: 
the  Limit  and  the  Unlimited;  the  One  and  the 
Many;  Rest  and  Motion;  Light  and  Darkness; 
Good  and  Evil.  To  conceive  things  in  general, 
and  more  particularly  human  affairs,  under  the 
form  of  balanced  opposition  was  a fixed  mental 
habit  with  the  Greeks : our  very  word  antithesis, 
taken  straight  from  their  language,  still  perpetuates 
that  form  of  thought  among  ourselves  ; although 
no  modern— not  even  Macaulay— has  pushed  its 
use  to  such  excess.  By  its  help  Homer  and 
Herodotus  arrange  their  materials;  by  its  laws 
the  great  sculptors  disposed  the  reliefs  on  the 
pediments  of  the  temples  they  had  to  adorn  with 
groups  of  statuary ; as  a rhetorical  artifice  it  dis- 
figures the  noble  eloquence  of  Thucydides.  In 
philosophy  we  find  the  employment  of  antitheti- 
cal couples  first  exemplified  by  Anaximander, 
who,  as  will  be  remembered,  assumes  an  eternal 
Infinite  out  of  which  the  finite  and  perishable 
things  of  experience  are  formed,  developing  such 
contrasted  qualities  as  heat  and  cold,  dryness 
and  wetness,  by  a process  of  differentiation  from 
its  homogeneous  substance.  We  may  suppose 
that  the  individual  service  of  Pythagoras  was  to 
34 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


take  up  and  generalise  this  fundamental  idea, 
bringing  the  great  social  conflict  of  good  and  evil 
into  line  with  the  universal  processes  by  which 
order  is  evolved  out  of  chaos. 

4.  Heracleitus. — So  far  the  philosophers  with 
whom  we  have  had  to  deal  have  been  little  more 
than  names,  distinguished  from  one  another  by 
purely  intellectual  attributes,  not  recognisable  as 
living  personalities.  But  Greece  was  the  very 
land  of  strongly-marked,  vivid,  individual  char- 
acteristics, as  the  Homeric  poems  already  show, 
and  the  personal  note,  so  conspicuous  for  two 
centuries  in  her  lyric  poets,  could  not  fail  ulti- 
mately to  make  itself  felt  in  the  creations  of 
abstract  thought.  It  meets  us  for  the  first  time 
in  Heracleitus  of  Ephesus,  universally  acknow- 
ledged as  the  greatest  of  the  prse  - Socratic 
philosophers,  and  probably  destined  to  rank  for 
original  genius  among  the  greatest  that  the  world 
has  ever  seen.  We  may  add  that  with  him  the 
separation  of  philosophy  from  science  in  the 
strict  sense  begins.  His  interest  lies  solely  with 
the  one  universal  law  of  nature,  possibly  general- 
ised from  particulars,  but  not  dependent  on  them, 
rather  dictating  to  them  what  they  shall  be. 
Science  and  common  sense  have  always  protested 
35 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


against  such  an  assumption:  our  own  Francis 
Bacon  has  given  the  weightiest  and  most  splendid 
expression  to  their  protest ; but  others  were 
found  to  utter  it  long  before  him.  We  have  to 
ask,  however,  whether  science  itself  could  have 
dispensed  with  those  paradoxes  of  pure  thought, 
whether  Bacon  himself  did  not  miss  more  truth 
by  a servile  adhesion  to  supposed  facts  than  the 
Greeks  missed  by  a sovereign  disregard  for  them. 

Our  personal  knowledge  of  Heracleitus  comes 
almost  entirely  from  what  fragments  of  his  com- 
position survive ; for  no  reliance  can  be  placed  on 
the  stories  current  about  his  life,  beyond  the  bare 
statement,  confirmed  by  some  references  of  his 
own,  that  he  flourished  at  the  end  of  the  sixth 
century  b.c.  Thus,  in  the  order  of  succession  he 
comes  immediately  after  Anaximenes,  the  last 
representative  of  the  Milesian  School ; and  in  fact 
he  seems  to  have  followed  the  Milesian  method 
of  seeking  for  a universal  principle,  a substance  of 
which  all  things  are  made.  Two  elements  had 
already  figured  in  that  capacity,  Water  and  Air. 
Heracleitus  supersedes  them  by  a third,  which  is 
Fire.  He  appeals  to  its  function  as  a universal 
medium  of  exchange.  ‘ As  goods  are  given  for 
gold  and  gold  for  goods,  so  everything  is  given 
for  fire  and  fire  for  everything.’  Our  philosopher 
36 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


would  have  entered  heartily  into  the  modern 
speculation  that  every  form  of  energy  is  electric 
and  the  whole  material  world  merely  so  much 
congealed  electricity. 

For  Heracleitus  fire  is  what  we  now  call  the 
Absolute,  the  eternally  self-existent  reality  under- 
lying all  appearance.  ‘This  order  of  things 
(/coo-yao?),  the  same  for  all,  was  not  made  by  any 
god  or  any  man,  but  was  and  is  and  will  be  for 
ever,  a living  fire,  kindled  by  measure  and 
quenched  by  measure.’  If  any  one  likes  to  call 
the  eternal  One  by  the  consecrated  name  of  Zeus 
he  may,  only  on  the  understanding,  as  seems  to  be 
hinted,  that  it  is  not  to  be  the  Zeus  of  the  poets, 
‘ a magnified  non-natural  man,’  but  an  impersonal 
power,  and  a relation  rather  than  a substance. 

There  is  an  obvious  contradiction  in  describing 
fire  as  both  ever- living  and  as  alternately  kindled 
and  quenched.  And  the  Ephesian  sage  would 
not  have  hesitated  for  a moment  to  acknowledge 
that  there  was  a contradiction.  For,  according  to 
him,  contradiction  is  the  central  fact  of  existence, 
the  spring,  as  we  should  say  now,  that  makes  the 
wheels  of  the  universe  go  round.  In  human 
affairs  this  is  clear  enough.  ‘ War  is  the  father 
and  king  of  all  things  ’ : it  originates  our  social 
distinctions,  ‘ making  some  gods  and  others  men, 
37 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


some  slaves  and  others  free.’  1 Homer  was  wrong 
in  wishing  strife  to  perish ; and  he  ought  to  be 
flogged  out  of  the  competitive  games.’ 

It  seems  likely  that  the  contempt  of  Heracleitus 
for  Pythagoras  may  be  explained  by  the  same 
cause  that  accounts  for  his  depreciatory  estimate 
of  Homer.  When  the  Samian  philosopher 
divided  the  great  principles  of  nature  into  a series 
of  antithetical  couples  he  was  right ; but  his 
whole  system  was  vitiated  by  the  failure  to  per- 
ceive that  these  opposites  are  necessary  to  each 
other’s  existence,  that  the  whole  frame  of  things 
is  determined  by  their  conflict  and  interplay. 
And  that  is  just  what  makes  fire  so  representative 
an  element,  so  fit  a type  of  the  world-pervading 
law.  Fire  lives  by  struggling  with  and  assimilat- 
ing its  own  opposites,  perishing  at  the  moment 
of  its  complete  triumph.  Speaking  more  accur- 
ately, it  only  seems  to  perish,  living  again  as  air, 
whose  birth  is  the  death  of  fire,  as  similarly  water 
lives  by  the  death  of  air,  earth  by  the  death  of 
water,  and  fire  once  more  by  the  death  of  earth. 

5.  The  Flux.— This  endless  process  of  trans- 
formation was  summed  up  by  the  Greeks  in  two 
words,  not  known  to  have  been  used  by  Hera- 
cleitus himself,  but  admirably  expressing  his 
38 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


philosophy : 7rdvra  pel — all  things  flow.  In  some 
instances  the  universal  flux  is  attested  by  the 
evidence  of  our  senses : no  man  bathes  twice  in 
the  same  river ; in  others  we  know  it  by  reason : 
‘a  new  sun  rises  every  day’ — a conclusion  de- 
duced, we  must  suppose,  from  the  fact  that  our 
own  fires  need  perpetual  supplies  of  fresh  fuel  to 
keep  them  burning.  Solid  earth  must  have 
proved,  in  more  senses  than  one,  a hard  nut  for 
the  theory  to  crack ; for  thousands  of  years  had 
still  to  pass  before  science  could  show  that  the 
most  quiescent  bodies  are  composed  of  molecules 
in  a state  of  perpetual  rotation  and  revolution. 
Probably  Heracleitus  argued  that  as  earth  is 
potentially  fire,  water,  and  air,  it  must  partake  in 
some  way  not  evident  to  our  imperfect  senses  of 
their  mobility  and  evasiveness. 

That  which  in  material  bodies  presents  the 
appearance  of  a perpetual  flowing  from  one  form 
to  another,  assumes  in  our  sensations,  appetites, 
and  ideas  the  still  higher  aspect  of  a universal 
relativity.  ‘ If  all  things  were  turned  to  smoke 
the  nostrils  would  distinguish  them  ’ ; and  in  fact 
‘ souls  do  smqll  in  the  underworld  ’ ; — Avhere,  as 
seems  to  be  implied,  everything  is  smoke.  Fishes 
find  salt  water  life-sustaining  which  to  men  is 
poisonous.  ‘ Asses  prefer  chopped  straw  to  gold.’ 
39 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


‘Swine  bathe  in  mud,  fowls  in  dust  or  ashes.’ 
1 The  most  beautiful  ape  is  ugly  when  compared 
with  a man ; the  wisest  or  most  beautiful  man 
would  be  an  ape  compared  with  the  gods.’  1 Good 
and  evil  are  one.  Physicians  expect  to  be  paid 
for  inflicting  all  sorts  of  torments  on  their 
patients.’  ‘We  should  not  know  there  was  such 
a thing  as  justice  did  injustice  not  exist.’  ‘ To 
God  ’ — or,  as  we  should  say,  from  the  absolute 
point  of  view — ‘ all  things  are  fair  and  good  and 
just.  The  distinction  between  just  and  unjust  is 
human.’  ‘ God  is  day  and  night,  winter  and 
summer,  war  and  peace,  plenty  and  famine.’ 
Yet  for  us  also  the  union  of  opposites  holds  good. 
‘ Health,  goodness,  satiety,  and  rest  are  made 
pleasant  by  sickness,  evil,  hunger,  and  fatigue.’ 

6.  The  Logos. — Heracleitus  might  have  pushed 
his  negation  of  all  the  usual  distinctions  em- 
balmed in  common  sense  to  a system  of  dissolving 
scepticism,  in  which  every  fixed  principle,  whether 
of  knowledge  or  of  action,  would  have  disappeared. 
But  he  did  not  go  to  that  extreme.  After  the 
doctrine  of  fire  as  the  world  element,  after  the 
dogma  of  an  all-pervading  relativity,  comes  the 
third  and  greatest  idea  of  his  philosophy,  the  idea 
of  universal  law  and  order.  We  have  already 
40 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


come  across  it  in  that  great  sentence  describing 
the  Cosmos  as  an  ever-living  fire  kindled  and 
quenched  ‘ according  to  measure.’  The  meaning 
is  that  fire  transforms  itself  into  water,  water  into 
earth,  and  so  on  on  a basis  of  strict  quantitative 
equivalence,  so  much  of  the  one  being  paid  in  and 
so  much  of  the  other  paid  out.  To  the  same 
effect  we  are  told  elsewhere  that  ‘ the  sun  will  not 
transgress  his  measures,  or  the  Erinyes  who  guard 
Justice  will  find  him  out.’  In  Greek  mythology 
the  Erinyes  had  for  their  original  function  to 
avenge  the  violated  sanctities  of  blood-relation- 
ship, and  more  particularly  to  punish  the  crime 
of  matricide,  a function  subsequently  extended  to 
the  punishment  of  all  crime.  By  a crowning 
generalisation  they  are  here  thought  of  as  the 
guardians  of  natural  law  in  the  widest  sense. 

Our  philosopher  calls  this  world-wide  law  by  a 
name  which  had  a great  future  before  it.  It  is 
no  other  than  the  Logos,  so  familiar  to  us  as  the 
Word,  proclaimed  in  the  proem  to  St.  John’s 
Gospel,  which  became  incarnate  in  Jesus  Christ. 
St.  John  had  derived  it  perhaps  from  Philo  of 
Alexandria,  Philo  from  the  Stoics,  and  the  Stoics 
from  Heracleitus.  To  the  Ephesian  sage  also,  as 
to  the  fourth  Evangelist,  the  Logos  is  the  light  that 
lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world — 
4i 


EARLY  GREER  PHILOSOPHY 


the  reason  within  him  by  which  the  cosmic 
Reason  is  revealed,  his  individual  portion  of  the 
universal  fire.  For  just  as  Anaximenes  had 
assimilated  the  breath  of  life,  the  animating  and 
sustaining  spirit  of  man,  with  the  all-constituting 
Air,  Heracleitus  assigns  the  same  twofold 
activity  to  his  elemental  Fire.  It  was  a common 
principle  in  Greek  philosophy  that  like  knows 
like : and  so  the  burning  stream  of  consciousness 
within  us  recognises  the  eternal  flux  without — 
recognises  it  also  as  reasonable,  or  rather  as  more 
reasonable  m proportion  to  its  vastly  greater 
dominion  and  duration. 

Agreement,  community,  identity  are  the  essen- 
tial notes  of  reality  and  reason.  It  will  be 
remembered  that  the  eternal  order  was,  in 
modern  phraseology,  established  as  objectively  true 
by  being  the  same  for  all  men.  ‘ All  human  laws 
draw  their  sustenance  from  the  one  divine  law  ’ ; 
and  to  judge  things  truly  we  should  hold  fast  to 
the  common  reason,  even  more  forcibly  than  good 
citizens  cling  to  the  law  of  the  State,  which  they 
defend  like  the  city-wall,  putting  down  the 
insolent  self-assertion  and  arrogance  of  indi- 
viduals. Individual  sovereignty  and  the  right  of 
private  judgment  divorced  from  reason  are 
fantastic  illusions.  Such  individuality  is  at  its 
42 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


height  ■when  we  are  asleep  and  dreaming,  each  of 
us  in  a world  of  his  own.  When  we  are  awake  it 
is  the  same  world  for  all. 

Not  that  Heracleitus  believes  in  the  wisdom  of 
the  majority  as  an  infallible  guide.  ‘Most  people 
are  foolish  and  bad ; the  good  are  few,  and  one 
man  is  worth  ten  thousand  if  he  be  the  best.’ 
Nevertheless  personal  authority  should  go  for 
nothing ; arguments  not  words  are  the  thing. 
Unfortunately  argument  is  thrown  away  on  the 
generality  ; as  we  saw,  asses  prefer  chopped  straw 
to  gold.  And  the  law  of  relativity  itself  explains 
why  the  law  is  not  understood.  Fire  is  only 
intelligible  to  the  soul  of  fire,  to  the  dry  soul. 
Degenerating  minds  in  which  the  vital  spark 
turns  to  water  are  thrown  out  of  touch  with  the 
essence  of  things:  theirs  is  a savour  of  death 
unto  death.  More  particularly  our  prophet’s  own 
countrymen,  the  Ephesians,  are  a hopelessly 
irreformable  set  with  a vicious  hatred  for  superior 
persons  as  such.  Better  if  the  adult  population 
were  all  to  hang  themselves  and  leave  the  city  to 
their  children. 

Such  utterances  are  marked  with  the  essenti- 
ally aristocratic  stamp  of  early  Greek  thought. 
It  is  probable  that  in  the  case  of  Heracleitus  this 
contemptuous  estimate  of  the  vulgar  was  accentu- 
43 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


ated  by  a rationalistic  disdain  for  the  new  popular 
religion.  When  he  observes  that  the  ritual  of 
Dionysus  would  be  shameless  indecency  were  it 
not  an  act  of  divine  worship,  his  reference,  stand- 
ing alone,  might  be  meant  for  no  more  than  an 
illustration  of  the  universal  relativity.  But  when 
taken  in  company  with  his  attack  on  the  Bacchic 
mysteries  and  the  prevalent  rage  for  secret  cere- 
monies of  all  kinds,  the  words  can  only  be 
interpreted  as  an  unequivocal  condemnation  of 
the  Orphic  revival.  Plato  spoke  no  otherwise  of 
the  same  manifestations  a hundred  and  twenty 
years  later,  and  Huxley’s  comments  on  Salvation- 
ism  are  less  severe. 

7.  Xenophanes. — Among  those  whom  Hera- 
cleitus  mentions  as  examples  of  learning  without 
intelligence  Xenophanes  is  one.  In  the  order  of 
time  this  philosopher,  an  Ionian  of  Colophon, 
precedes  the  great  Ephesian ; but  for  our  purposes 
he  may  be  most  conveniently  studied  in  connec- 
tion with  a school  developed  in  express  opposition 
to  the  theory  of  a perpetual  flux. 

I have  called  Xenophanes  a philosopher;  but 
he  was  primarily  rather  a poet  of  alert  and  many- 
sided  interests  who  spent  a long  life  wandering 
about  Hellas  and  making  a profession  of  reciting 
44 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


his  own  compositions  at  the  banquets  of  the  rich. 
It  would  appear  that  the  conversation  at  such 
social  gatherings  largely  consisted  in  repeating 
fabulous  stories  about  the  quarrels  of  Titans  and 
Centaurs ; and  we  know  from  Homer  that  scandal- 
ous ballads  about  the  amours  of  gods  and  god- 
desses were  sometimes  part  of  the  entertainment. 
Xenophanes  wished  to  introduce  a higher  tone,  and 
as  a preliminary  he  attacks  the  mythology  of  the 
old  poets  with  uncompromising  vigour.  1 Homer 
and  Hesiod,’  he  exclaims,  ‘ have  attributed  to  the 
gods  everything  that  is  a shame  and  reproach 
among  men — theft,  adultery,  and  mutual  decep- 
tion.’ But  not  to  think  of  the  gods  as  like  bad 
men  is  merely  the  first  step  in  true  religion ; we 
should  not  think  of  them  as  like  men  at  all. 
‘ Mortals  think  that  the  gods  are  generated,  that 
they  have  senses,  a voice,  and  a body  like  their 
own.  The  Ethiopians  fancy  that  their  deities  are 
black-skinned  and  snub-nosed;  the  Thracians 
give  theirs  fair  hair  and  blue  eyes.  If  oxen  or 
lions  had  hands  and  could  paint  they  too  would 
make  gods  in  their  own  image.’ 

So  much  for  the  aristocratic,  Olympian  religion 
of  the  poets.  As  to  the  popular  Chthonian 
religion  of  the  mysteries,  with  its  suffering  and 
dying  gods,  he  is  reported  to  have  dismissed  it 
45 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


with  even  briefer  and  more  cutting  sarcasm. 
Asked  by  the  Eleates  should  they  sacrifice  to 
Leucothea  and  mourn  for  her  or  not,  he  advised 
them  not  to  mourn  if  they  believed  her  to  be  a 
goddess,  not  to  sacrifice  if  they  believed  her  to  be 
a woman. 

For  himself  Xenophanes,  like  Anaximander, 
believed  in  an  infinite  source  of  existence;  but, 
unlike  his  Milesian  predecessor,  he  identified 
this  one  and  eternal  element  with  the  visible 
earth,  which  he  supposed  to  stretch  downward 
beneath  our  feet  without  end.  This  infinite  and 
eternal  reality  is  God  and  the  only  God,  resem- 
bling mortals  neither  in  form  nor  thought,  but 
perceiving  and  thinking  through  its  whole  extent. 

We  are  told  that  Xenophanes  created  palae- 
ontology, pointing  to  the  impressions  of  marine 
animals  and  plants  found  embedded  in  the  quarries 
of  Syracuse  as  evidence  that  what  is  now  dry 
land  was  once  water,  teaching  also  that  it  would 
at  some  future  period  be  covered  with  water  once 
more — a theory  probably  suggested  by  Anaxi- 
mander’s idea  that  man  was  evolved  from  a fish- 
like creature. 

8.  Pa,rmenides. — Interesting  in  himself,  Xeno- 
phanes interests  us  still  more  as  the  immediate 
46 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


predecessor  of  Parmenides,  the  poet-thinker  to 
whom  Elea,  an  otherwise  obscure  Ionian  colony 
in  Southern  Italy,  owes  its  immortal  renown. 
Grown  to  manhood,  as  would  seem,  early  in  the 
fifth  century  b.c.,  and  therefore  a contemporary 
of  the  great  Persian  war,  Parmenides  comes  a 
little  later  than  Heracleitus,  as  whose  polar  oppo- 
site and  complement  he  appears  in  the  history  of 
Greek  philosophy.  In  point  of  genius  there  can 
be  no  comparison  between  them,  Heracleitus  was 
so  much  the  greater  of  the  two ; indeed  it  is  only 
within  the  last  century  that  we  have  been  able  to 
appreciate  his  astonishing  genius  at  something 
like  its  true  value.  At  the  same  time,  Parmenides 
had  a more  typically  Greek  mind,  and  therefore 
he  counts  for  more  in  the  history  of  Greek 
thought ; indeed  from  Plato  on  his  ideas  dominate 
its  evolution  to  the  end. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  Pythagoras  (or  his 
followers)  conceived  reality  under  the  form  of  so 
many  antithetical  couples,  confronting  each  other 
in  unreconciled  opposition;  the  Limit  and  the 
Unlimited,  the  One  and  the  Many,  Rest  and 
Motion,  Light  and  Darkness,  being  the  most  con- 
spicuous among  them.  And  it  will  also  be 
remembered  that  Heracleitus,  while  fully  admit- 
ting the  existence  of  such  a pervading  antithesis, 
47 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


refused  to  admit  it  as  absolute.  According:  to  his 
interpretation,  the  members  of  each  couple  are 
necessary  to  each  other’s  existence,  are  always 
passing  into  one  another,  are  in  truth  at  bottom 
the  same  thing.  Now  Parmenides,  starting  also 
from  the  Pythagorean  conception,  utterly  rejects 
this  theory,  and  even  reacts  so  violently  against 
it  as  to  deny  reality  to  what  may  be  called  the 
negative  side  of  the  antithesis.  There  are  no 
such  things  as  infinity,  plurality,  change,  or  dark- 
ness. The  whole  of  being  is  one  uniform,  un- 
changeable, limited,  luminous  sphere,  without 
parts,  without  a beginning,  and  without  an  end- 
He  describes  it  in  verses  of  great  power  and 
dignity,  which  may  be  translated  as  follows  : 

‘ The  Whole  extends  continuously, 

Being  by  Being  set,  immovable, 

Subject  to  the  restraint  of  mighty  bonds, 

Both  increate  and  indestructible, 

Since  birth  and  death  have  wandered  far  away, 

By  true  conviction  into  exile  driven. 

The  same  in  self-same  place  and  by  itself 
Abiding  doth  abide  most  firmly  fixed, 

And  bounded  round  by  strong  Necessity. 

Wherefore  a holy  law  forbids  that  Being 
Should  be  without  a bound,  else  want  were  there, 

And  want  of  that  would  be  a want  of  all.’ 

To  us  moderns,  with  our  habitual  prostration 
before  the  idea  of  infinity,  this  dogmatic  con- 
48 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


elusion  seems  anything  but  self-evident ; and  ‘ to 
be  without  a bound  ’ strikes  one  as  a proof  of 
affluence  rather  than  of  destitution ; but  Par- 
menides here  shows  himself  a true  Greek,  for  to 
the  Hellenic  genius  a boundary  was  associated 
with  finish  rather  than  with  finitude. 

9.  The  Theory  of  Being. — It  has  been  sug- 
gested that  the  Parmenidean  conception  of  Being 
as  something  without  movement,  variety,  or 
change  is  not  meant  to  describe  the  world  of 
sense  and  experience,  but  rather  the  hidden 
reality  that  underlies  sensible  appearances,  the 
world  as  revealed  to  pure  intelligence,  the  ‘ thing 
in  itself’  of  modern  metaphysics.  This,  however, 
is  an  entire  misconception.  Early  Greek  thought 
had  not  risen  to  the  idea  of  a fundamental  dis- 
tinction between  reality  and  appearance;  the 
delusions  it  recognised  were  occasional,  acci- 
dental, individual  errors  of  perception,  not  in- 
herent in  human  perception  as  such.  What  is 
more,  Parmenides  leaves  no  sort  of  doubt  as  to 
his  meaning.  He  tells  us  that  only  what  is  can 
be  conceived  or  even  spoken  of ; the  non-existent 
is  also  the  unthinkable.  Moreover,  what  is  can 
never  not  have  been,  can  never  cease  to  be.  In 
other  words,  what  most  philosophers  still  believe 
D 49 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


of  the  world  as  a whole,  what  most  men  of  science 
till  lately  believed  of  material  atoms  or  of  the 
smallest  pulses  of  energy — that  they  are  ‘ both 
increate  and  indestructible  ’ — this  Parmenides 
believed  so  absolutely  and  universally  that  for 
him  the  conviction  excluded  the  possibility  even 
of  movement  and  change.  Suppose  a body  passes 
from  one  place  to  another,  or  suppose  its  colour 
to  be  altered,  say,  from  green  to  red — in  either 
case  something  that  was  has  ceased  to  be,  some- 
thing is  now  that  was  not  before.  And  so  the 
very  first  law  of  existence  would  be  broken,  being 
would  be  identical  with  non-being,  in  fact  just 
what  was  taught  by  Heracleitus,  whose  very 
words  are  quoted  in  this  connection  as  a vain 
thing. 

There  is  another  and  even  stronger  reason  for 
interpreting  the  absolute  reality  of  Eleatic  philo- 
sophy as  no  mysterious  ideal  existence,  but  a 
direct  object  of  sensuous  perception.  Parmenides 
describes  it  as  not  only  bounded,  but  as  shaped 
like  a perfect  sphere,  extending  equally  in  all 
directions  from  a central  point.  And  his  words 
so  evidently  apply  to  the  visible  world  that  all 
subsequent  thinkers  who  came  under  his  influ- 
ence continued  for  many  centuries  to  regard  the 
material  universe  as  a perfect  sphere. 

50 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


This  conception  had  its  root  in  a great  scientific 
discovery — no  less  a discovery  than  that  the 
earth  is  a globe.  Before  Parmenides  no  Greek 
was  aware  of  the  fact,  nor  perhaps  was  any 
Oriental  astronomer.  Thales  and  his  successors 
were,  in  more  senses  than  one,  quite  at  sea  on  the 
subject.  Xenophanes,  with  every  opportunity, 
through  a long  life,  of  assimilating  the  most 
advanced  ideas  of  his  age,  thought  that  the  earth 
stretched  downwards  to  infinity.  Now,  whether 
Parmenides  himself  actually  discovered  the 
earth’s  sphericity  is  not  quite  certain.  We  can 
only  say  that  there  is  good  authority  for  be- 
lieving that  he  did.  That  he  knew  it  to  be  a 
fact  is  therefore  highly  probable.  And  this  fact, 
so  astounding,  so  contrary  to  common  opinion, 
would  influence  his  whole  way  of  thinking.  Its 
suggestiveness  would,  so  to  speak,  go  to  his  head. 
A sphere  is  the  one  absolutely  perfect  thing  in 
experience,  excluding  change,  excluding  variety, 
without  beginning  or  end,  the  very  type  of  what 
is  finished.  And  now  it  turns  out  that  earth,  the 
greatest  thing  we  know,  is  a sphere.  No  more 
remained  than  to  represent  all  existence  on  the 
same  model  and  to  invest  it  with  every  imagin- 
able perfection. 

Astronomy  was  not  the  only  positive  science 
5i 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


that  influenced  the  thought  of  Parmenides.  As 
a South  Italian  Greek  he  must  have  come  into 
touch  with  the  Pythagoreans;  indeed  we  have 
seen  reason  to  believe  that  his  severe  monism 
was  a protest  against  their  dualistic  view  of 
nature.  And  apart  from  such  ultimate  questions 
he  would  have  much  to  learn  from  them  about 
geometry,  in  which  they  were  at  that  time  the 
world’s  acknowledged  masters.  Now  geometry  is 
the  science  ot  space;  and  it  will  be  found  on 
examination  that  Parmenides  in  enumerating  the 
properties  of  Being  almost  identifies  them  with 
the  properties  of  absolute  space.  It  is  extended, 
continuous,  homogeneous,  unchanging,  with  parts 
completely  immovable  among  one  another.  He 
did  not  indeed  conceive  it  as  infinite ; but  for  the 
Greek  philosophers,  as  for  modern  mathematicians, 
the  infinity  of  space  remained  an  open  question. 

What  really  differentiated  his  view  from  ours 
was  the  ascription  of  intelligence  to  that  rigid 
unalterable  sphere.  We  habitually  think  of  mind 
as  the  inextended;  to  Parmenides  mind  and 
extension  were  one  and  the  same.  And  we  need 
only  place  ourselves  at  his  point  of  view  to  see 
why  this  should  be.  From  the  beginning  Greek 
thought  had  retained  much  of  that  animism 
which  is  the  sole  philosophy  of  primitive  men. 

52 


THE  FIRST  METAPHYSICIANS 


Not  to  repeat  what  has  already  been  pointed  out 
in  the  case  of  the  Milesian  School,  Xenophanes  in 
identifying  the  world  with  God  had  described 
it  as  perceiving  and  thinking  through  its  whole 
infinite  extent.  And  Heracleitus  had  represented 
the  reasonable  principle  within  ourselves  as  a 
fiery  particle,  able  by  virtue  of  its  common 
nature  to  recognise  and  act  in  harmony  with  the 
cosmic  fire  by  which  the  universe  is  shaped  and 
directed.  Parmenides  moves  on  the  same  lines 
with  his  predecessors,  but  goes  a step  beyond 
them.  According  to  him  mind  and  its  object 
are  not  merely  akin;  they  are  the  same.  Nor 
indeed  was  any  other  conclusion  compatible  with 
the  first  principle  of  his  system,  that  difference 
neither  does  nor  can  exist.  Or  again,  we  may  say 
that  the  world  without  has  been  simplified  down 
to  pure  extension ; the  world  within  has  been 
simplified  down  to  pure  reason,  which,  as  it 
merely  repeats  and  reflects  that  external  uni- 
formity, is  logically  indistinguishable  from  it. 

After  his  uncompromising  enunciation  of 
absolute  truth,  Parmenides  made  the  concession 
to  common  opinion  of  writing  a sequel  to  his  First 
Philosophy  on  the  lines  of  old  Ionian  speculation, 
in  which  a place  is  given  to  those  negative  elements 
of  darkness,  cold,  and  opacity  which  he  had  begun 
53 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


by  dismissing  as  unthinkable.  A theory  of 
evolution  found  its  place  here,  leading  up  to  what 
would  now  be  called  a materialistic  view  of  mind, 
as  determined  by  the  excess  of  some  one  element 
in  the  composition  of  man’s  bodily  organisation. 
But  these  were  accommodations  to  the  world’s 
opinions  that  the  world  has  willingly  let  die.  It 
was  by  his  relentless  paradoxes,  not  by  his  con- 
temptuous concessions,  that  Parmenides  exercised 
a decisive  influence  on  the  subsequent  courses  of 
thought.  And  it  was  through  their  combination 
with  the  almost  equally  daring  paradoxes  of 
Heracleitus  that  the  element  of  truth  contained 
in  the  respective  systems  of  these  two  great  men 
told  for  all  that  it  was  worth. 


54 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 

1.  Zeno  of  Elea. — Parmenides  seems  never  to 
have  made  more  than  one  disciple.  This  was  a 
young  Eleate  named  Zeno,  to  whom  he  was 
united  not  only  by  common  opinions  but  by  the 
bonds  of  devoted  private  affection.  Yet  closely 
as  they  agree  in  principle,  the  two  thinkers  belong 
to  distinct  ages  with  widely  contrasted  tendencies 
and  methods : the  one  dogmatic,  the  other  argu- 
mentative ; the  one  more  comprehensive,  the 
other  more  analytic  ; the  one  potent  to  unite  and 
simplify ; the  other  excelling  in  subtlety  and 
minuteness. 

What  struck  people  most  about  the  philosophy 
of  Parmenides  was  that  it  denied  motion  ; and  to 
such  a laughter-loving  race  as  the  Greeks  this 
paradox  gave  much  occasion  for  ridicule.  Zeno 
came  to  his  master’s  assistance  by  showing,  or 
attempting  to  show,  that  the  idea  of  motion  in- 
volves greater  difficulties  than  its  denial;  and 
55 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


this  he  did  by  a series  of  examples  whose  interest 
is  not  exhausted  even  for  the  speculation  of  our 
own  times.  His  most  celebrated  puzzle  is  that 
known  as  Achilles  and  the  tortoise.  Let  us  sup- 
pose that  there  is  a race  between  the  two,  and 
that  the  tortoise  is  allowed  a start,  say,  of  ten 
feet ; then  Achilles  will  never  overtake  his  slow- 
footed competitor,  for  while  he  is  getting  over 
the  first  ten  feet  the  tortoise  will  have  accom- 
plished, say,  one  foot,  or  as  much  less  than  that 
as  you  please.  Anyhow  it  will  be  some  measurable 
distance,  however  small.  Then  while  Achilles  is 
traversing  that  space  the  tortoise  will  have  ad- 
vanced through  the  same  fraction  of  it  as  before, 
and  so  on  ad  infinitum.  It  is  no  answer  to  say 
that  as  a matter  of  fact  the  swifter  does  always 
overtake  the  slower  runner ; the  question  is  how 
space  can  be  conceived  except  as  infinitely  divis- 
ible, and  how,  granting  that,  an  infinite  number 
of  divisions  can  be  run  through  in  a finite  time. 
It  has  been  suggested  as  a solution  that  the  in- 
finite divisibility  of  time  makes  this  possible. 
But,  in  fact,  it  only  doubles  the  difficulty,  for 
then  we  have  two  infinite  series  to  be  run  out 
instead  of  one. 

Sceptical  arguments  are  dangerous  allies  to 
dogmatic  theories ; and  Zeno’s  method  might 
56 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


have  been  turned  with  destructive  effect  against 
his  master.  For  it  goes  to  disprove  the  possi- 
bility of  continuously  extended  space  as  a thing 
in  itself ; and  this  Parmenides  had  assumed  with- 
out question ; nor  indeed  was  it  questioned  until 
thousands  of  years  after  his  time. 

2.  Empedocles.  — Change  and  motion  held 
their  own  notwithstanding  all  that  the  Eleatics 
could  say  to  prove  their  impossibility.  But 
Parmenides  by  his  daring  paradoxes  had  brought 
into  full  view  an  aspect  of  the  truth  that  Hera- 
cleitus,  going  to  the  opposite  extreme,  had  tended 
to  obscure,  and  that  common  sense  had  yet  to 
learn  as  something  self-evident  when  it  was  once 
stated.  This  was  the  perpetuity  through  all 
change  of  a reality  underlying  appearance,  a 
substance  that  is  neither  created  nor  destroyed. 
We  may  say  that  the  Ionians  had  practically 
assumed  the  existence  of  such  a substance, 
variously  identifying  it  with  one  of  the  so-called 
elements, — water,  air,  earth,  or  fire.  But  their 
analysis  had  been  what  chemists  call  qualitative 
rather  than  quantitative.  They  did  not  sharply 
formulate  the  generalisation  that  matter  persists 
through  all  metamorphoses  without  loss  or  gain. 
Heracleitus  alone,  with  his  wonderful  sagacity, 
57 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


grazed  but  did  not  grasp  this  law.  Fully  to 
realise  it  was  reserved  for  the  inferior  genius  of 
Empedocles. 

Empedocles  stands  as  an  isolated,  somewhat 
problematic,  figure  among  the  early  Greek  philo- 
sophers. By  exception  he  was  not  an  Ionian 
but  a Dorian;  by  exception  not  an  aristocrat 
but  a democrat.  His  restless  and  insatiable 
vanity  also  makes  an  unpleasant  contrast  with 
the  singular  personal  majesty  of  the  rest.  For 
the  first  though  not  for  the  last  time  in  history, 
he  makes  us  feel  that  to  be  a charlatan  and  a 
great  thinker  are  not  incompatible  predicates. 

His  birthplace  may  have  had  something  to  do 
with  his  ambiguous  character  and  attitude.  This 
was  Acragas,  the  modern  Girgenti,  a Sicilian  city, 
renowned  for  the  luxury  of  its  inhabitants  and 
the  splendour  of  its  public  edifices,  still  as  ruins 
pre-eminent  among  the  glories  of  Doric  archi- 
tecture. It  was  a chief  seat  of  the  Chthonian 
religion,  whose  two  great  goddesses,  Demeter  and 
Persephone,  were  especial  objects  of  popular  wor- 
ship. Standing,  moreover,  almost  on  the  frontier 
between  Hellenic  and  Phoenician  civilisation, 
Acragas  was  exposed  in  a peculiar  way  to  the 
evil  influences  of  Semitic  example  with  the 
least  restraint  from  the  old  Greek  traditions  of 
58 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


Sophrosyne,  of  self-knowledge  and  self-control. 
Empedocles  tells  his  countrymen  that  he  walked 
through  the  Sicilian  cities  crowned  with  garlands, 
honoured  as  an  immortal  god,  followed  by  crowds 
of  men  and  women  entreating  him  to  heal  their 
diseases,  to  give  them  oracles,  to  show  them  the 
way  to  gain. 

What  the  multitude  asked  from  Empedocles 
was  no  more  than  his  philosophy  undertook  to 
give.  His  disciples  were  to  learn  the  arts  by 
which  old  age  is  warded  off,  the  winds  controlled, 
and  the  dead  restored  to  life. 

Our  prophet  claimed,  in  fact,  to  be  nothing  less 
than  a fallen  divinity,  who  in  some  far  distant 
pre-natal  stage  of  existence  had  stained  himself 
with  bloodshed,  and  was  condemned  as  an  expia- 
tion of  his  guilt  to  pass  through  a long  cycle  of 
existences,  vegetable,  animal,  and  human,  as  a 
dweller  in  the  water,  in  the  air,  or  on  the  earth. 
Apparently  the  period  of  purification  was  now 
nearly  complete,  and  his  restoration  to  the  abodes 
of  the  blessed  in  sight.  Like  the  sages  of  the 
Far  East  he  preaches  the  kinship  of  all  living 
things,  the  sacredness  of  animal  life,  and  the 
pollution  incurred  by  eating  meat.  A deep  vein 
of  Oriental  pessimism  also  enters  into  his  theory 
of  existence. 


59 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


Standing  alone  such  utterances  might  be  inter- 
preted as  no  more  than  an  enthusiastic  expression 
of  the  new  Orphic  religion,  derived  proximately 
from  the  Pythagorean  schools  of  South  Italy. 
The  puzzling  thing  is  that  they  have  come  down 
to  us  in  close  association  with  a thoroughly 
materialistic  philosophy,  where  no  place  seems  to 
be  left  for  an  immortal  human  soul,  and  hardly 
even  for  gods,  except  as  poetic  names  for  the 
elements  and  forces  of  nature.  Empedocles  lived 
towards  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century  b.c.  One 
is  tempted  to  think  of  him  as  a ‘modernist’  in 
reference  to  the  religion  of  his  age,  giving  a 
mythological  colouring  to  speculations  really 
destructive  of  all  mythology. 

3.  The  Four  Elements. — ‘No  wise  man,’  the 
Sicilian  philosopher  tells  us,  ‘ would  imagine  that 
[mortals]  had  no  existence  before  their  birth,  and 
will  have  none  after  their  dissolution.’  These 
words  might  be  taken  to  imply  the  soul’s  eternity. 
But  probably  they  mean  no  more  than  that  the 
body  is  composed  of  imperishable  parts.  Empedo- 
cles is  credibly  reported  to  have  been  a pupil  of 
Parmenides;  and  he  repeats  the  master’s  assertion 
that  what  is  can  neither  begin  nor  cease  to  be, 
but  without  pushing  it  to  the  extent  of  denying 
60 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


all  reality  to  change  and  motion.  What  men  call 
birth  and  death  are  simply  a mixture  and  separa- 
tion of  pre-existing  substances.  Fire,  air,  earth, 
and  water  are  the  ultimate  elements  whence  all 
things  arise  and  into  which  they  return.  Each  of 
these  had  been  erected  by  one  or  other  of  the 
Ionian  thinkers  into  the  sole  principle  of  nature : 
Empedocles  follows  the  facile  method  of  eclectics 
in  every  age  by  granting  equal  rights  to  all. 
And  his  philosophy  has  left  a permanent  stamp 
on  language  which  the  discoveries  of  modern 
chemistry  have  not  been  able  to  efface. 

4.  Love  and  Strife. — The  tendency  to  harmon- 
ise and  combine  carries  him  on  to  a further  and 
more  daring  speculative  effort.  Parmenides  has 
to  be  reconciled  not  only  with  common  sense  but 
also  with  Heracleitus.  Experience  tells  us  that 
the  world  is  not  now  constituted  as  a perfect 
homogeneous  sphere  in  the  way  dreamed  of  at 
Elea;  but  that  happy  consummation  has  been 
reached  already  in  the  eternal  revolutions  of 
existence,  and  will  be  reached  again.  Two 
powers  control  the  universal  process,  Love  and 
Strife;  Love  drawing  the  elements  into  one, 
Strife  tearing  them  apart ; and  the  whole  world- 
cycle  passes  through  four  phases  distinguished  by 
61 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


their  alternating  predominance  and  decline.  As 
Love  gains  ground  things  draw  together ; when 
it  triumphs  they  are  united  in  the  perfect  sphere, 
but  only  to  fly  asunder  on  their  way  to  complete 
separation  when  Strife  becomes  lord  of  the 
ascendant.  We  are  now  on  the  down-grade ; 
that  is  to  say,  we  are  living  in  a period  of 
increasing  differentiation  and  ever  greater  sub- 
jection of  nature  to  the  law  of  Strife.  Empedocles 
may  have  been  led  to  this  gloomy  diagnosis  by 
the  sentence  in  which  Heracleitus  speaks  of  war 
as  the  father  of  all  things. 

Love  and  Strife  answer  in  some  ways  to  the 
attractive  and  repulsive  forces  of  modern  science. 
But  they  are  conceived  as  material  or  at  least  as 
extended  objects,  with  just  as  much,  or  as  little, 
self-consciousness  as  the  four  elements.  We 
ourselves  are  composed  of  all  six ; and  as  like  is 
only  known  by  like,  we  recognise  the  presence  of 
each  in  the  external  world  through  that  portion 
of  it  which  helps  to  make  up  our  separate  indi- 
viduality. 

5.  Theory  of  Sensation.  — A current  phrase 
speaks  of  the  external  world  as  known  to  us 
through  the  channels  of  sense.  The  phrase  is 
now  merely  metaphorical,  but  it  contains  a 
62 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


reminiscence  of  what  Empedocles  thought  literal 
truth.  He  imagined  that  streams  of  material 
particles  emanated  from  the  bodies  about  us,  and 
that  these  made  their  way  through  certain  minute 
passages  or  pores  with  which  the  organs  of  sense 
are  supplied,  thus  producing  the  characteristic 
sensation  by  which  the  element  within  is  enabled 
to  recognise  the  element  from  without  as  akin  to 
itself.  There  is  an  exact  adaptation  between  the 
particles  and  the  pores  of  the  same  element,  so 
that  fire,  for  example,  is  only  penetrable  by  fire, 
and  water  by  water.  By  this  theory,  much  more 
than  by  his  ambitious  cosmology,  Empedocles 
showed  himself  an  original  and  progressive 
thinker,  in  harmony,  like  Zeno,  with  the  minutely 
analytical  tendencies  of  his  age,  and  contributing 
far  more  than  Zeno  to  the  subsequent  develop- 
ment of  speculation. 

6.  Glimpses  of  Modern  Science.  — Like  his 
Ionian  predecessors  the  wonder-working  Acra- 
gantine  poet  has  a place  in  the  history  of  science 
no  less  than  in  the  history  of  philosophy.  He 
divined  the  truth  that  light  travels  with  an 
appreciable  velocity ; he  knew  that  the  revolution 
of  one  body  round  another  can  only  be  maintained 
by  the  composition  of  two  forces,  a centrifugal 

63 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


and  a centripetal ; and  he  recognised  the  sexual 
reproduction  of  plants.  He  even  suggested  the 
famous  doctrine  of  the  non-survival  of  the  unfit, 
afterwards  borrowed  from  him  by  Lucretius.  And 
if  we  could  take  the  account  already  referred  to 
of  his  triumphal  progress  through  Sicily  as  less 
an  expression  of  intoxicated  personal  vanity  than 
a dream  of  the  victories  in  store  for  human 
knowledge,  no  Greek  would  be  so  justly  entitled 
to  the  name  of  a prophet. 

7.  Melissus. — Empedocles  founded  no  school. 
After  him  the  scene  changes  once  more  to  East 
Hellas,  and  the  language  of  philosophy  relapses 
from  poetry  to  sober  prose.  But  through  all 
external  vicissitudes  the  new  method  of  infini- 
tesimal analysis  is  maintained,  leading  to  fresh 
conquests  in  the  invisible  world.  Change  of 
scene  was  indeed  the  best  possible  security  for 
continued  progress.  It  saved  speculation  from 
sinking  into  a routine.  Unlike  Moab,  the  Greek 
genius  did  not  ‘settle  on  its  lees,’  but  was 
‘ emptied  from  vessel  to  vessel,’  escaping  the 
reproach  of  a taste  that  remains  and  a scent  that 
is  not  changed. 

In  East  Hellas,  as  in  Sicily,  the  problem  was  to 
reconcile  Heracleitus  with  Parmenides,  the  theory 
64 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


of  an  unceasing  flux  with  the  theory  of  an  un- 
changing reality.  We  may  assume  that  the 
Ephesian  philosophy  was  well  known  and  widely 
canvassed  in  those  parts  ever  since  its  first 
introduction,  seeing  that  its  fame  had  spread 
within  a few  years  to  Italy.  And  we  have  proof 
positive  that  the  Eleatic  philosophy  was  studied 
in  Ionia  by  a contemporary  of  Empedocles,  the 
Samian  admiral  Melissus,  who  defeated  an 
Athenian  fleet  in  the  year  440  B.c.  This  remark- 
able man,  the  only  speculative  sailor  mentioned 
in  all  history,  wrote  a prose  treatise,  of  which 
considerable  fragments  survive,  reproducing  the 
main  ideas  of  Parmenides  with  some  important 
variations.  Unlike  the  master,  he  declared  that 
the  eternal  reality  was  without  a bound — identify- 
ing it,  as  would  seem,  with  infinite  space;  and 
while  denying  movement  or  multiplicity  to 
absolute  Being,  he  allows  them  at  least  a place 
in  thought  as  illusions  of  sense.  Such  an 
enlargement  of  view  meant  much,  how  much  will 
be  apparent  when  we  come  to  study  the  grandest 
result  of  early  Greek  thought,  the  Atomic  Theory. 

8.  Atomism.  — Before  explaining  how  the 
theory  of  atoms  arose,  let  me  explain  what  it 
means.  Atomism  implies  first  of  all  that  matter, 
E 65 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


or  the  substance  of  which  bodies  are  composed, 
while  it  occupies  space  and  is  therefore  extended, 
is  not,  like  pure  space,  continuous,  but  discrete. 
That  is,  it  consists  of  perfectly  distinct  and  separ- 
ate parts,  moving  about  in  void  space,  solid, 
indivisible,  impenetrable,  differing  from  one  an- 
other only  in  size  and  shape,  capable  of  being 
united  together  in  mechanical  groups,  but  only 
communicating  with  one  another  by  external 
contact  and  collision.  In  the  next  place,  the 
atoms  are  so  small  as  to  lie  beyond  the  reach  of 
our  senses ; but,  assuming  space  to  be  infinitely 
extended,  they  are  infinite  in  number,  for  other- 
wise the  universe  would  in  the  course  of  infinite 
ages  have  disappeared  by  dissipation  into  the 
surrounding  void.  They  are  also  eternal ; for 
the  least  tendency  to  decay  acting  through  end- 
less time  would  equally  have  involved  their  total 
annihilation  before  the  present  date.  And,  being 
indestructible,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that 
they  ever  began  to  exist,  not  to  mention  the 
general  inconceivability  that  out  of  nothing 
something  could  arise. 

Evidently  the  atom  of  Greek  philosophy  is  an 
incomparably  more  meagre  idea  than  the  atom  of 
modern  science  with  its  formidable  outfit  of 
energies,  conceived  as  endowed  with  gravitation, 
66 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


cohesion,  elasticity,  radio-activity,  electro-mag- 
netic properties,  and  chemical  affinities.  At  the 
same  time  we  must  remember  that  all  this  elabor- 
ate mechanism  has  been  built  up  stone  by  stone 
on  the  simple  foundation  supplied  by  the  con- 
structive genius  of  two  Ionian  Greeks,  Leucippus, 
whose  birth-place  is  unknown,  and  Democritus,  a 
native  of  Abdera  on  the  barbarous  Thracian 
coast,  enjoying  little  popularity  in  their  lifetime 
and  unhonoured  after  death  even  by  the  in- 
heritors who  traded  most  successfully  on  their 
discoveries. 

9.  Leucippus. — From  the  scanty  information 
supplied  to  us  on  the  subject  it  appears  that 
Leucippus,  the  real  founder  of  atomism,  lived  a 
little  after  Empedocles  and  Melissus.  Generalis- 
ing from  the  doctrine  of  subtle  material  emana- 
tions as  the  cause  of  external  perception,  put 
forward  by  the  one,  he  would  form  the  conception 
of  multitudinous  invisible  particles  as  the  basis  of 
all  real  existence.  And  the  infinite  space  of  the 
other,  dissociated  from  its  material  contents, 
would  supply  him  with  the  equally  essential  con- 
ception of  a void  giving  full  scope  for  their  move- 
ment and  interplay.  By  a remarkable  anticipation 
of  what  is  now  called  atomicity  he  supposed  that 
67 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


these  particles  or  at  least  some  of  them  were 
supplied  with  little  hooks  by  which  they  became 
woven  into  chains  and  membranes,  ultimately 
forming,  so  to  speak,  the  cell- wall  of  a closed 
universe,  within  which  the  cosmic  evolution  of 
order  out  of  chaos  was  conducted.  ‘ Nothing,’  he 
said,  ‘ happens  by  chance,  everything  by  law  and 
necessity  ’ — or,  as  we  should  say,  by  purely 
mechanical  causation. 

For  the  original  cause  of  motion  Greek  atom- 
ism refers  us  to  weight,  which  at  that  time 
seemed  to  be  an  inseparable  quality  of  matter. 
It  had  not  yet  been  discovered  that  the  fall  of 
heavy  bodies  was  connected  with  a tendency  to 
move  towards  the  centre  of  the  earth ; nor  was  it 
known  that  bodies  falling  in  a vacuum  move 
with  equal  velocities,  so  that  collisions  between 
them  cannot  occur.  Accordingly  Leucippus 
credited  all  his  atoms  alike  with  a downward 
motion  through  infinite  space ; and  he  supposed 
that  the  larger  atoms,  having  a greater  velocity 
than  the  smaller,  would  overtake,  collide,  and 
become  entangled  with  them.  As  the  knowledge 
of  astronomy  and  physics  spread,  the  inconsistency 
of  this  primitive  atomism  with  natural  law  came 
to  be  understood,  and  therefore  no  man  of  science 
after  Democritus  ever  adopted  it  in  antiquity, 
68 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


although  the  contrary  has  been  stated  by  ill- 
informed  literary  critics  in  our  own  day. 

10.  Democritus. — Democritus  seems  to  have 
adopted  the  atomic  theory  of  Leucippus  without 
any  essential  modification.  What  distinguishes 
him  as  a philosopher  is  the  enormous  range  of 
his  interests.  We  have  seen  that  the  love  of 
knowledge  for  its  own  sake  was  recognised  at  a 
very  early  time  as  the  characteristic  feature 
in  philosophy.  Democritus  expressed  this 
passion  vividly  by  saying,  ‘ I had  rather  discover 
a single  new  explanation  than  be  King  of  Persia.’ 
But  his  ambition  went  beyond  a knowledge  of 
things,  which,  taken  alone,  is  merely  science.  He 
asked  what  was  the  nature  of  knowledge  itself, 
thus  giving  a still  wider  extension  to  philosophy, 
of  which  that  question  has  ever  since  formed  an 
integral  part.  And  he  seems  to  have  been  the 
first  to  point  out  the  distinction,  since  grown  so 
familiar,  between  the  two  great  sources  of  know- 
ledge ; sense  which  gives  us  the  appearances,  and 
understanding  which  gives  us  the  reality,  of  things. 
He  owed  it  to  the  atomic  theory.  Atomism  is  a 
reasonable  inference  from  our  sensations,  but,  at 
the  same  time,  in  a way,  it  denies  them.  As  he 
puts  it,  ‘ sweet  and  bitter,  hot  and  cold,  exist  by 
69 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


convention’ — or,  as  we  now  say,  subjectively — 
‘ colour  exists  by  convention ; in  reality,  atoms  and 
the  void.’  So  little  truth  is  there  in  the  reproach 
commonly  brought  against  the  materialists,  of 
whom  Democritus  was  a precursor,  that  they 
believe  nothing  but  the  evidence  of  their  senses. 

11.  Moral  Philosophy. — Philosophy,  however, 
is  not  complete  even  when  we  have  added  a 
theory  of  knowing  to  our  theory  of  being.  Man 
is  by  nature  not  only  contemplative  but  active, 
and  even  more  active  than  contemplative. 
Accordingly  if  we  would  attain  true  universality, 
to  those  other  theories  a theory  of  practice 
must  be  added.  And  just  as  he  who  takes  all 
knowledge  for  his  province  must  needs  simplify 
the  task  by  an  effort  of  extreme  generalisation,  by 
going  back  to  first  principles,  by  singling  out  the 
fundamental  element,  or  the  original  cause,  or 
the  widest  law  of  things,  or  again  by  fixing  on  the 
true  criterion  of  knowledge,  so  also  the  supreme 
master  of  practice  will  make  it  his  object  to  pick 
out  from  the  infinite  details  of  social  intercourse, 
politics,  industry,  and  fine  art,  the  absolute  end 
to  which  everything  else  is  a means,  which  alone 
gives  a real  value  to  all  those  multifarious  activi- 
ties. In  a word,  as  the  later  Greeks  put  it,  after 
70 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


physics  and  logic  comes  ethics  or  the  philosophy 
of  conduct. 

It  proves  the  wonderful  genius  of  Democritus 
as  a systematising  thinker  that  he  took  not  only 
the  second  step  but  the  third.  Here  also,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  Milesian  school,  with  their  general 
theories  of  the  world  as  a natural  growth,  the 
absence  of  an  organised  priesthood  teaching  a 
fixed  theology  was  essential  to  speculative  free- 
dom. After  the  first  outburst  of  scientific 
speculation  there  had  indeed  been  a danger  that 
the  great  religious  revival  we  call  Orphicism 
might  intervene  to  check  its  further  progress,  at 
least  in  the  direction  of  bringing  conduct  also 
under  natural  law ; and  not  to  speak  of  the 
Pythagoreans,  there  are  very  marked  symptoms 
in  Empedocles  of  a desire  to  keep  well  with  the 
mystical  movement,  a nervous  anxiety  to  disclaim 
too  great  freedom  of  thought.  Now,  for  the 
atomists  at  least  there  could  be  no  such  obscur- 
antist leanings.  While  formally  acknowledging 
the  possible  existence  of  superhuman  beings, 
their  theory  left  no  place  for  gods  in  any  true 
sense  of  the  word : in  a world  where  the  atoms 
alone  were  eternal,  where  necessity  and  mechani- 
cal law  alone  ruled,  there  could  be  neither 
creation,  nor  providence,  nor  immortality. 
7i 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


Democritus  in  fact  boldly  explained  theology  as  a 
primitive  personification  of  natural  objects. 

At  the  time  when  Democritus  taught,  which 
seems  to  have  been  in  the  last  third  of  the  fifth 
century  B.c,,  ethics  was,  as  it  still  continues  to 
be,  much  less  advanced  than  physical  science. 
But  the  facts  of  moral  experience  being  better 
known  left  less  room  for  error.  Thus  what  he  had 
to  say  on  the  subject  took  the  form  of  proverbial 
philosophy,  of  short  sentences,  true  so  far  as  they 
go,  but  not  worked  up  into  systematic  form.  They 
are  not  inspired  by  the  great  social  enthusiasm  of 
Plato  and  the  Stoics ; but  neither  is  there  the 
low  standard  vulgarly  supposed  to  go  with 
philosophical  materialism.  The  highest  end  is 
declared  to  be  a contented  mind,  which  is  won  by 
avoiding  excess  and  by  fixing  the  desires  not  on 
sensual  indulgences  but  on  imperishable  things. 
Sins  are  to  be  avoided  not  from  fear  but  from  a 
sense  of  duty.  Goodness  is  not  abstinence  from 
doing  wrong,  but  from  the  wish  to  do  wrong. 
Encouragement  and  persuasion  are  a better  train- 
ing to  virtue  than  law  and  compulsion.  The 
whole  world  is  the  fatherland  of  a good  soul.  Yet 
our  aphorist  is  too  genuine  a Greek  to  merge 
political  duty  in  a vague  cosmopolitanism.  He 
tells  us  to  put  the  interests  of  the  state  above  all 
72 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


others,  not  grasping  at  more  power  for  ourselves 
than  is  good  for  the  community.  For  a well- 
administered  city  best  secures  the  safety  of  all. 

Democritus  has  been  called  ‘ the  laughing 
philosopher  ’ because  a late  legend  describes  him 
as  always  making  merry  over  the  follies  and  vices 
of  mankind.  As  it  happens  this  silly  story  is 
sufficiently  answered  by  one  of  his  own  maxims. 
‘ Men  should  not  laugh  but  mourn  over  each 
other’s  misfortunes.’  And  to  those  who  know 
Heracleitus  at  first  hand  the  parallel  designation 
of  him  as  ‘ the  weeping  philosopher  ’ must  seem 
an  equally  infelicitous  description  of  his  lofty 
contempt  for  the  common  herd. 

12.  Anaxagoras. — Anaxagoras  of  Clazomenae, 
who  has  been  reserved  for  the  last  place  in  this 
chapter,  was  older  than  any  of  the  thinkers  who 
have  so  far  been  dealt  with  in  it ; but  as  a link 
with  the  schools  of  Athens  it  will  be  found  more 
convenient  to  discuss  his  teaching  after  that  of 
the  atomists,  with  the  earliest  form  of  which  he 
may  have  had  some  acquaintance. 

Our  informants  tell  us  that  Anaxagoras  was 
born  about  500  B.c.,  that  he  settled  in  Athens 
when  entering  on  middle  age,  and  remained  there 
for  thirty  years.  His  was  the  true  philosophic 
73 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


temperament.  Asked  what  made  life  worth 

living,  he  replied,  ‘ contemplating  the  heavens  and 
the  universal  order.’  The  great  statesman 

Pericles  was  his  pupil  and  friend.  Euripides  is 
mentioned  among  his  admirers,  and  is  believed  to 
have  had  the  Ionian  sage  in  mind  when  he  wrote 
these  noble  lines : 

‘ Happy  is  he  who  has  learned 
To  search  out  the  secret  of  things, 

Not  for  the  citizens’  bane, 

Neither  for  aught  that  brings 
An  unrighteous  gain. 

But  the  ageless  order  he  sees 
Of  Nature  that  cannot  die, 

And  the  causes  whence  it  springs, 

And  the  how  and  the  why. 

Never  have  thoughts  like  these 
To  a deed  of  dishonour  been  turned.’ 1 

In  their  religious  beliefs,  however,  neither 
Pericles  nor  Euripides  represented  average  public 
opinion  at  Athens.  There  may  have  been  as 
superstitions  communities  in  Hellas;  none  were 
so  suspicious  of  new  views  or  so  intolerant. 
Possibly  the  wonderful  cleverness  of  the  Athenians 
made  them  more  keenly  alive  than  other  Greeks 
to  the  dissolving  effect  of  the  new  speculations  on 
the  old  beliefs.  We  have  seen  that,  in  fact,  from 


1 Translated  by  Madame  Duclaux. 

74 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


Thales  on,  the  radical  incompatibility  between  the 
two  was  becoming  more  and  more  obvious.  A 
crisis  was  bound  to  come  at  last,  and  it  came  at  a 
spot  where  political  animosities  and  democratic 
jealousies  helped  to  organise  the  forces  of  re- 
actionary prejudice. 

13.  A Martyr  of  Science.— In  the  year  432  an 
attempt  was  made  to  dislodge  Pericles  from  the 
position  he  had  long  occupied  as  the  trusted 
leader  of  the  Athenian  people.  For  tactical 
reasons  his  assailants  began  by  bringing  charges 
of  impiety  against  Aspasia,  his  wife  in  all  but  the 
name,  the  great  sculptor  Plieidias,  whom  he  had 
employed  for  the  embellishment  of  the  Acropolis, 
and  Anaxagoras.  The  charges  against  Aspasia 
and  Pheidias  were  of  a frivolous  character  and  do 
not  concern  us  here.  Against  the  Clazomenian 
philosopher  there  was,  unhappily,  a very  strong 
case.  He  taught  that  the  sun  was  a red-hot  mass 
of  stone,  larger  than  the  Peloponnesus,  that  the 
stars  were  not  fire,  that  the  moon  was  an  earthy 
body,  shining  by  reflected  light,  with  an  irregular 
surface,  and  partially  built  over.  Now  at  Athens 
the  sun  and  moon  passed  for  being  blessed  gods, 
and  a pious  belief  prevailed  that  they  were  wor- 
shipped as  such  by  the  whole  human  race.  To 
75 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


treat  them  as  lumps  of  inanimate  matter  seemed 
therefore  not  only  irreligious  but  absurd. 

According  to  some  of  our  authorities  Anaxa- 
goras was  tried  for  blasphemy  and  condemned. 
According  to  others  he  escaped  condemnation  by 
a timely  flight  from  Athens.  It  seems  certain 
that  he  ended  his  days  at  Lampsacus  in  an 
honoured  old  age  among  a people  who  contrived 
to  reconcile  their  reverence  for  the  sun  and  moon 
with  their  reverence  for  intellectual  and  moral 
grandeur.  At  his  own  desire  the  philosopher’s 
death  was  annually  commemorated  by  giving  a 
holiday  to  the  children  of  the  town.  His  image 
may  still  be  seen  on  the  coins  of  his  native  place, 
Clazomenae,  probably  copied  from  a statue 
erected  there  in  his  honour. 

14.  Qualitative  Atomism.  — Democritus  ob- 
served with  truth  that  the  astronomical  heresies 
which  brought  Anaxagoras  into  such  trouble 
were  not  new.  Nor  was  it  new  to  say — although 
a fragment  of  his  states  it  as  something  para- 
doxical and  unfamiliar  — that  what  people 
commonly  call  becoming  and  perishing  is  really 
the  combination  and  separation  of  pre-existent 
parts.  For  Empedocles  had  preceded  him  in  start- 
ing with  this  assumption.  The  originality  of  An- 
76 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


axagoras  lay  in  giving  this  great  principle  an  exten- 
sion undreamed  of  by  any  of  his  predecessors  or 
contemporaries.  According  to  him,  not  only  does 
the  mass  of  matter  remain  a fixed  quantity,  but 
its  qualities  also  are  permanent,  that  is  such 
properties  as  temperature,  colour,  smell,  and  the 
like.  There  is  always  the  same  amount  of  these 
in  the  world,  more  or  less  latent,  more  or  less 
apparent,  as  they  are  more  or  less  confused  or 
distinct.  In  the  beginning  the  confusion  was 
infinite;  analysis  might  have  gone  on  for  ever 
without  arriving  at  an  ultimate  element  that  did 
not  combine  all  shapes,  temperatures,  colours, 
smells,  and  tastes.  What  the  atomists  declared 
to  exist  only  ‘ by  convention,’  or  in  modern  par- 
lance ‘subjectively,’  is  ‘objective,’  real,  eternal. 
And  even  now  the  separation  of  qualities  is  not 
perfect.  Everything  contains  a trace  of  every- 
thing else.  What  we  say  of  human  nature,  that 
no  man  is  quite  without  good  or  without  evil, 
without  wisdom  or  without  folly,  Anaxagoras 
said  of  all  nature. 

15.  Nous. — How  then  from  the  primal  con- 
fusion did  the  present  world  of  order,  of  at  least 
relative  distinction  arise  ? The  answer  is  strong 
and  simple.  ‘ All  things  were  together : then 
77 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


Nous  (Reason)  came  and  disposed  them  in 
order.’  Such  words  suggest  the  idea  of  an  intelli- 
gent First  Cause;  and  in  fact  that  was  what 
Greek  readers  at  first  took  them  to  mean.  But  it 
has  always  remained  doubtful  what  Anaxagoras 
himself  understood  by  Nous.  In  some  respects 
he  clearly  conceived  it  as  like  human  reason,  but 
with  far  greater  powers.  It  ‘ knows  everything 
about  everything  and  controls  everything.’  On 
the  other  hand,  if  not  exactly  a material,  it  is  an 
extended  substance,  ‘ the  thinnest  and  purest  of 
all  things,’ — unmixed  with  the  elements,  and 
enabled  by  this  absolute  separateness,  of  which  it 
is  a unique  example,  to  act  on  them.  Its  action, 
however,  is  of  a merely  mechanical  kind,  and  has 
no  other  effect  than  to  set  up  a vortical  move- 
ment by  which  the  component  elements  of  the 
original  mixture  are  segregated,  what  is  unlike 
being  parted  and  what  is  like  being  thrown 
together. 

If,  as  seems  the  only  possible  interpretation  of 
his  words,  Parmenides  identified  pure  reason  with 
pure  space  or  extension,  we  may  presume  that 
Anaxagoras  adopted  this  view  from  the  Eleatic 
philosophy.  Some  modern  thinkers  have  called 
space  ‘ the  possibility  of  movement  ’ ; and  para- 
doxical as  the  idea  may  seem  to  us,  an  ancient 
78 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 

thinker  may  well  have  expressed  the  connection 
between  the  two  by  saying  that  space  was  the 
cause  of  motion.  Such  a confusion  had,  indeed, 
already  become  quite  incredible  to  Plato  and 
Aristotle.  They  supposed  that  when  Anaxagoras 
talked  about  Reason  as  an  ordering  power  he 
meant  something  like  the  reason  of  an  architect 
or  a legislator;  and  so  when  in  the  sequel  they 
found  him  treating  the  evolution  of  the  universe 
as  a process  of  mechanical  causation  they  could 
not  reconcile  such  materialism  in  the  details  of 
the  system  with  the  spiritualism  of  its  first  prin- 
ciple. On  the  other  hand,  the  modern  interest  in 
evolution  as  at  first  an  unconscious  process  and 
only  becoming  self-reflective  in  its  last  stages, 
gives  us  perhaps  a clearer  insight  into  the  true 
significance  of  Nous  than  was  possible  to  the 
great  founders  of  idealism.  To  describe  it  as  an 
anticipation  of  Herbert  Spencer  would  of  course 
be  an  anachronism.  Yet  there  is  at  least  a germ 
of  the  ‘ differentiation  and  integration  ’ that 
Spencer  made  so  much  of  in  the  activity  ascribed 
to  the  cosmic  Nous  by  Anaxagoras.  And  perhaps 
it  was  the  consciousness  of  their  own  reason  as  a 
discriminating  and  identifying  faculty  that  led 
both  philosophers  to  look  on  all  nature  as  exempli- 
fying the  same  process  on  a far  vaster  scale. 

79 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


16.  Diogenes  of  Apollonia. — As  it  happens,  the 
Greek  word  of  which  differentiation  is  the  exact 
equivalent  was  first  brought  into  use  by  Diogenes 
of  Apollonia,  a second-rate  Dorian  eclectic  who 
popularised  the  study  of  natural  philosophy  at 
Athens  by  combining  the  doctrine  of  Anaxagoras 
with  that  of  Anaximenes.  Anaximenes  had 
taught  that  Air  was  the  fundamental  principle 
of  existence,  the  substance  out  of  which  all  things 
are  made,  the  animating  soul  of  man  and  the 
great  conservative  force  of  nature.  Diogenes 
took  the  further  step  of  identifying  this  elemental 
Air  with  the  Nous,  thus,  as  might  seem,  giving 
more  prominence  to  the  material  and  mechanical 
side  of  the  latter.  In  point  of  fact,  however,  he 
laid  more  stress  than  Anaxagoras  on  the  evidences 
of  design  in  nature,  the  beautiful  harmonies  of 
which,  according  to  him,  could  only  be  explained 
as  the  work  of  an  intelligent  cause. 

During  the  fifth  century  great  progress  was 
made  by  the  Greeks  in  the  study  of  physiology ; 
and  this  science  came  to  exercise  an  even  more 
decisive  influence  on  speculation  than  mathe- 
matics and  astronomy.  We  see  this  in  Diogenes, 
who  was  indeed  a doctor  by  profession ; and  the 
idea  of  differentiation,  to  which,  as  has  been  said, 
he  first  gave  a name,  would  be  especially  brought 
80 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHILOSOPHERS 


home  to  him  by  his  knowledge  of  the  human 
organism,  affording  as  this  does  a most  complete 
example  of  the  division  of  labour.  Of  course  the 
uses  of  its  various  parts  were  then  very  imperfectly 
understood;  but  Diogenes  was  sagacious  enough 
to  conjecture  that  the  vascular  system,  of  which 
he  wrote  a careful  account,  had  something  to  do 
with  the  distribution  of  air — or,  as  we  should  say, 
oxygen — over  the  whole  body;  and  he  acutely 
explained  the  absence  of  intelligence  in  plants  to 
their  want  of  such  a system. 

17.  Aristophanes.  — Aristophanes,  the  great 
comic  dramatist  of  the  age,  wrote  a play  called 
The  Clouds,  satirising  the  philosophers,  in  the 
year  423  B.C.,  and  from  this  we  can  gather  that 
the  system  of  Diogenes  was  then  the  fashionable 
philosophy  at  Athens.  The  poet  had  no  eye  for 
the  religious  value  of  the  new  theories,  regarding 
them  solely  as  an  impious  attempt  to  substitute 
material  agencies  for  the  time-honoured  Olympian 
divinities,  with  the  belief  in  whom  he  conceived 
the  interests  of  private  morality  to  be  inseparably 
bound  up.  In  this  respect  he  thoroughly  repre- 
sented the  public  opinion  of  Athens,  already 
exhibited  in  the  persecution  of  Anaxagoras,  and 
destined  under  the  guidance  of  the  greatest 
F 81 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


Athenian  thinkers  to  lead  Greek  philosophy  away 
from  the  physical  studies  it  had  pursued  with 
such  success  into  other  directions  more  in  harmony 
with  the  religious  genius  of  the  city  where  it  was 
henceforth  to  find  a home. 


82 


THE  SOPHISTS 


CHAPTER  TV 

THE  SOPHISTS 

1.  Education  at  Athens. — Speculative  freedom, 
complete  everywhere  else  in  the  Hellenic  world, 
was,  as  we  have  seen,  not  complete  at  Athens. 
But  in  that  city  which  called  herself  the  school 
of  Greece,  education  always  remained  free,  to  this 
extent  at  least,  that  it  was  a matter  of  individual 
enterprise.  Although  in  other  ways  sufficiently 
absorbing  and  despotic,  the  State  neither  provided 
the  means  of  instruction  nor  did  it  attempt  to 
prescribe  what  the  course  of  instruction  should 
be.  Apparently  any  one  that  liked  could  open  a 
school,  and  fathers  could  send  their  sons  to  any 
school  they  liked.  The  system  seems  to  have 
worked  well.  Every  Athenian  citizen  could  read 
to  some  extent,  and  it  was  considered  rather 
disreputable  not  to  read  well.  Boys  of  the  higher 
classes  were  also  taught  to  write,  to  play  on  the 
lyre,  and  to  repeat  a good  deal  of  poetry  by  heart. 
In  the  best  times  of  the  republic  they  were  also 
83 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


trained  to  be  hardy,  obedient,  and  pure  In  later 
life  some  people  continued  to  read  literature 
besides  hearing  some  of  the  greatest  things  that 
were  ever  written,  in  the  theatre,  and  some  of  the 
greatest  things  that  were  ever  spoken,  in  the  public 
assemblies.  Booksellers’  shops  existed,  and  there 
is  reason  to  believe  that  even  so  abstruse  a work 
as  that  of  Anaxagoras  could  be  bought  for  a 
drachma — a little  under  tenpence  in  our  money. 
Educated  women  are  mentioned  as  a class  by 
Plato  in  the  fourth  century  B.C.,  and  we  are  told 
that  tragedies  were  their  favourite  reading,  as 
indeed  of  most  persons,  which,  considering  the 
austerity  of  the  Greek  tragic  drama,  shows  a 
considerable  refinement  of  taste. 

What  we  call  the  higher  or  University  educa- 
tion was  a creation  of  philosophy,  and  had  only 
just  begun  to  dawn  in  the  age  of  Pericles.  At 
first  young  men  entering  on  public  life  learned 
what  it  was  essential  for  them  to  know  about  the 
world  and  about  great  affairs  from  some  older 
friend  to  whom  they  were  attached  by  ties  of 
affectionate  intimacy.  Sometimes  they  profited 
also  by  conversing  with  women  of  genius. 

Under  a free  government  the  power  of  speech 
is  the  surest  road  to  success.  Hence  in  modern 
democracies  lawyers  command  a disproportionate 
84 


THE  SOPHISTS 


share  of  political  influence.  In  old  Athens  there 
was  no  such  profession:  as  prosecutor  or  as 
defendant  every  one  had  to  plead  his  own  cause 
before  a large  popular  jury.  Thus,  even  apart 
from  any  ambition  to  lead  the  State,  every  citizen 
was  interested  in  mastering  the  arts  both  of 
cross-examination  and  of  continuous  delivery ; 
while  to  men  of  high  birth  and  wealth,  being 
marked  out  as  special  objects  of  attack  for 
political  opponents  and  blackmailers,  address  in 
using  the  weapons  of  tongue-fence  became  even 
a matter  of  life  and  death.  In  course  of  time 
litigants  made  up  to  some  extent  for  the  want 
of  counsel  by  employing  a professional  hand  to 
write  a speech  for  them  which  they  then  learned 
by  heart  and  delivered  in  court  as  if  it  had  been 
their  own  composition.  This  practice,  however, 
although  it  might  relieve  the  mass  of  Athenian 
citizens  from  the  necessity  of  studying  rhetoric 
as  an  art,  left  the  demand  for  a professional  train- 
ing in  rhetoric  unaffected,  as  the  speech-writers 
themselves  required  to  be  educated  for  their  work. 

2.  Philosophy  and  Rhetoric. — Philosophy  as 
the  study  of  things  in  themselves  does  not  seem 
at  first  sight  in  any  way  related  to  rhetoric — at 
least  not  to  the  rhetoric  of  law-courts  and  de- 
85 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


liberative  assemblies  where  human  interests  are 
the  subject  of  discussion,  and  appeals  to  human 
passion  the  means  adopted  by  a skilful  speaker 
for  making  his  opinions  prevail.  It  must,  how- 
ever, be  borne  in  mind  that  Greek  philosophy 
owed  its  origin  to  the  schools  of  science,  a circum- 
stance which  from  the  beginning  brought  it  into 
connection  with  the  practice  of  teaching  ; that  it 
systematised  the  habit  of  taking  wide  views,  so 
characteristic,  even  in  Homer,  of  Greek  eloquence ; 
that  the  earliest  sages  had  something  to  say 
about  man  as  well  as  about  nature,  while  their 
successors  gave  an  ever  greater  place  to  the  laws 
of  life  and  conduct  as  the  evolution  of  thought 
went  on ; and  finally  that  a knowledge  of  the 
world’s  secrets,  by  raising  its  possessor  above  all 
petty  cares,  interests,  and  prejudices,  surrounded 
him  with  a certain  halo  of  intellectual  and  moral 
superiority  well  calculated  to  impose  on  a Greek 
audience.  For  these  reasons  the  two  seemingly 
independent  spheres  of  rhetoric  and  philosophy 
— the  study  of  words  and  the  study  of  things — 
expanded  until  they  met  and  overlapped,  a wide 
range  of  subjects  being  either  treated  as  common 
ground  or  hotly  disputed  between  the  rival 
teachers  who  regarded  education  from  opposite 
points  of  view. 


86 


THE  SOPHISTS 


It  was  agreed  that  the  youth  of  good  family, 
after  he  had  left  school,  needed  some  further 
training  as  a preparation  for  taking  part  in  public 
or  private  business  with  credit  to  himself  and  his 
ancestry.  In  other  words,  there  was  a demand 
for  the  higher  education.  And  just  as  now,  it  was 
a moot-point  what  that  education  should  consist 
of,  above  all  what  place,  if  any,  should  be  held  in 
it  by  religion  and  morality ; morality  more  parti- 
cularly occupying  the  very  centre  of  the  ground 
shared  or  disputed  between  rhetoric  and  philo- 
sophy. Not  that  a contemporary  of  Aristophanes 
used  such  abstract  terms  as  religion  and  morality 
to  express  his  meaning ; but  he  had  consecrated 
traditions  of  belief  and  conduct  which  may  con- 
veniently be  summed  up  under  those  two  names, 
and  which  meant  for  him  all  that  religion  and 
morality  mean  for  us. 

3.  The  Sophists. — The  demand  for  higher 
education  called  into  existence  a class  of  teachers 
known  as  Sophists.  In  modern  language  a 
sophist  is  one  who  uses  fallacious  arguments, 
knowing  them  to  be  such.  When  Aristotle 
wrote,  the  name  bore  a still  more  opprobrious 
significance,  for  he  defines  it  as  one  who  reasons 
falsely  for  the  sake  of  gain.  In  earlier  times, 
3; 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


however,  this  was  not  so,  for  Pindar  and  Hero- 
dotus use  sophist  in  an  altogether  creditable 
sense,  as  meaning  a man  of  superior  skill  or 
wisdom,  whether  he  happened  to  be  a great  philo- 
sopher or  an  ordinary  intellectual  craftsman. 
What  seems  to  have  first  raised  a prejudice 
against  this  originally  honourable  appellation  was 
the  emergence  of  certain  persons  who  professed 
to  teach  wisdom  and  virtue  in  return  for  a sub- 
stantial payment.  Money-making  as  such  was 
not  thought  disreputable  in  good  Greek  society, 
for  even  so  haughtily  aristocratic  a poet  as 
Pindar  wrote  odes  to  order.  But  then  it  must  be 
remembered  that  a poem,  like  a picture  or  a statue, 
seems  to  possess  a certain  tangible  reality  making 
it  a more  appropriate  equivalent  for  so  much  hard 
cash  than  such  purely  ideal  values  as  wisdom  and 
virtue,  which  also  are  universally  associated 
with  a considerable  indifference  to  this  world’s 
goods.  And  this  feeling  would  be  still  further 
strengthened  by  the  fact  that  no  philosopher 
had  ever  exacted  a fee  from  his  pupils. 

Again,  for  reasons  already  stated,  that  higher 
education  which  the  sophists  sold  to  rich  young 
men  always  included  a training  in  rhetoric.  Now 
an  Athenian  who  was  used  to  hear  rival  states- 
men supporting  opposite  policies  in  the  Assembly 
88 


THE  SOPHISTS 


and  rival  pleaders  presenting  mutually  contra- 
dictory views  of  law  and  fact  to  the  popular 
tribunals,  must  have  had  it  strongly  borne  in  on 
him  that  Avhile  one  speaker  was  certainly  wrong 
each  in  turn  managed  to  make  it  seem  that  he 
was  right  — a clear  proof  that  one  of  them  at 
least  knew  the  art  of  making  the  worse  appear 
the  better  reason.  From  whom  could  they  have 
learned  this  nefarious  art  but  from  their  sophist 
teachers ; and  was  it  not  scandalous  that  a class 
of  persons  should  exist  who  made  it  their  pro- 
fession, and  a very  lucrative  profession  also,  to 
pervert  the  moral  principles  of  the  community  ? 

Again,  as  all  philosophers  were  popularly  called 
sophists,  and  as  all  attempted  to  explain  meteoro- 
logical phenomena  by  other  than  divine  agencies, 
besides  expressing  more  or  less  paradoxical 
opinions  about  the  nature  of  things  in  general, 
the  paid  teachers  of  wisdom  got  the  credit  of 
what  the  vulgar  considered  the  impieties  and 
absurdities  of  philosophy.  And  so  much  being 
certain,  it  was  easy  to  believe,  with  or  without 
evidence,  that  they  taught  their  pupils  to  dis- 
regard every  duty  but  the  pursuit  of  their  own 
private  advantage. 

4.  Protagoras. — The  first  and  most  famous  of 
89 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

the  Sophists  was  Protagoras  of  Abdera.  Born  in 
the  year  480  B.C.,  he  became  a paid  teacher  at 
thirty,  and  pursued  that  calling  for  a period  of 
forty  years  with  brilliant  success,  traversing  the 
whole  breadth  of  the  Hellenic  world,  and,  if  we 
may  judge  from  what  seems  to  be  the  typical 
instance  of  Athens,  exciting  immense  enthusiasm 
among  the  more  enlightened  classes  of  Greek 
society.  Pericles  debated  moral  problems  with 
him,  and  he  was  employed  to  make  laws  for  the 
Athenian  colony  of  Thurii.  On  the  occasion  of 
a later  visit  to  the  imperial  city  public  attention 
was  drawn  to  the  fact  that  Protagoras  was 
a declared  agnostic.  A book  of  his  began  with 
the  words : ‘ As  to  the  gods,  I do  not  know 
whether  they  exist  or  not.  Life  is  too  short  for 
such  difficult  enquiries.’  The  author  was  expelled 
from  Athens : a herald  was  sent  round  demand- 
ing the  surrender  of  the  book  from  all  private 
individuals  who  possessed  it;  and  the  copies 
collected  were  burnt  in  the  market-place.  Prota- 
goras himself  was  lost  at  sea  on  his  way  to  Sicily. 
He  was  then  nearly  seventy.  It  may  be  that  the 
treatise  which  gave  occasion  to  such  an  outbreak 
of  inquisitorial  fanaticism  had  only  just  been 
written,  and  that  the  words  about  the  shortness 
of  life  refer  to  the  very  limited  time  during  which 
90 


THE  SOPHISTS 


the  author  might  expect  his  own  intellectual 
activity  to  continue. 

5.  Humanism.  — Judging  from  the  scanty 
materials  at  our  disposal  Protagoras  was  not  only 
a great  educator  but  also  a great  and  original 
thinker.  His  profession  of  agnosticism  must  be 
read  in  company  with  another  celebrated  sentence 
quoted  from  the  beginning  of  his  wrork  on  Truth ; 
‘ Man  is  the  measure  of  all  things,  determining 
what  does,  and  what  does  not,  exist.’  Plato  in 
his  old  age  opposed  to  this  the  principle  that  God 
and  not  man  is  the  true  measure.  That  is  to  say, 
the  standard  of  truth  and  good  must  be  some- 
thing ideal  and  beyond  experience.  And  else- 
where he  has  tried  to  reduce  the  human  test  of 
reality  to  an  absurdity  by  identifying  it  with  the 
doctrine  that  when  two  people  disagree  they  must 
both  be  right.  It  seems  likely  enough  that 
Protagoras  attached  great  importance  to  indi- 
vidual experience  and  conviction,  to  what  we  now 
call  ‘ the  point  of  view.’  But,  as  Plato  himself 
suggests,  this  was  not  inconsistent  with  dis- 
criminating between  one  person’s  opinion  and 
another’s  with  due  regard  to  their  respective 
authorities.  And  the  Sophist’s  object  would  be 
to  make  his  pupils  better  judges  than  they  were 
9i 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


before,  the  ultimate  test  of  rightness  being  refer- 
ence to  human  interests  rather  than  to  the  oracles 
of  problematic  gods. 

While  the  standard  varies  from  man  to  man, 
but  with  an  appeal  from  the  stupid  and  ignorant 
to  the  educated  and  intelligent,  it  also  varies 
between  ages  and  nations,  involving  a similar 
appeal  from  barbarism  to  civilisation,  from  a less 
to  a more  advanced  stage  of  social  progress. 
Protagoras  seems  to  have  first  discovered  the 
doctrine  of  human  development,  viewing  it  as 
above  all  a moral  growth.  Perhaps  the  evolu- 
tionism of  early  Greek  science  suggested  this 
view.  According  to  a speech  put  into  his  mouth 
by  Plato  morality  is  the  very  foundation  of 
human  life,  the  condition  of  every  other  art,  the 
essential  distinction  between  brutes  and  men, 
between  savages  and  civilised  communities. 
Some  are  bom  with  more,  and  some  with  less 
capacity  for  acquiring  virtue ; but  that  it  is  an 
acquisition  is  proved,  among  other  ways,  by  the 
existence  of  penal  law.  For  punishment  can  only 
be  justified  as  a deterrent  from  wrong-doing — in 
other  words  as  a moralising  agency. 

It  would  appear  that  the  method  followed  by 
Protagoras  as  a teacher  was  quite  in  harmony 
with  his  Humanist  philosophy.  While  the  other 
92 


THE  SOPHISTS 


Sophists  gave  young  men  the  sort  of  scientific 
education  that  age  afforded,  i.e.,  a course  of  arith- 
metic, geometry,  and  astronomy,  he  took  them 
straight  to  ethics  and  politics,  interspersing  his 
lectures  with  literary  illustrations  from  the  poets. 
According  to  him,  the  absolutely  straight  lines 
and  perfect  circles  of  geometry  are  fictions  to 
which  nothing  in  reality  corresponds ; nor  do 
the  celestial  movements  exhibit  that  exact  uni- 
formity assumed  by  the  astronomers. 

6.  Hippias  the  Naturalist. — That  system  of 
scientific  education  from  which  Protagoras  so 
markedly  separated  himself  found  its  most 
typical  representative  in  Hippias  of  Elis.  This 
very  remarkable  man  seems  to  have  originated 
the  idea  of  natural  law  as  the  foundation  of 
morality,  distinguishing  nature  from  the  arbi- 
trary conventions  or  fashions,  differing  according 
to  the  different  times  or  regions  in  which  they 
arise,  imposed  by  arbitrary  human  enactment, 
and  often  unwillingly  obeyed.  He  held  that  there 
is  an  element  of  right  common  to  the  laws  of  all 
countries  and  constituting  their  essential  basis. 
He  held  also  that  the  good  and  wise  of  all  coun- 
tries are  naturally  akin  and  should  regard  one 
another  as  citizens  of  a single  state.  This  idea 
93 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


was  subsequently  developed  by  the  Cynic  and 
still  more  by  the  Stoic  schools,  passing  from  the 
latter  to  the  jurists,  in  whose  hands  it  became 
the  great  instrument  for  converting  Roman  law 
into  a legislation  for  all  mankind. 

Hippias  set  a high  value  on  truth  as  a virtue, 
preferring  Achilles  to  Ulysses  on  account  of  his 
superior  veracity.  Perhaps  it  was  as  an  exercise  in 
pure  truth  that  he  inculcated  the  study  of  mathe- 
matics. And  seeing  how  large  a part  equality 
plays  in  that  study  also,  some  Greeks  cherished  it 
as  a lesson  in  justice.  Euripides  may  have  had 
the  method  of  Hippias  in  view  when  he  wrote  the 
noble  lines : 

1 Honour  Equality  who  binds  together 
Both  friends  and  cities  and  confederates  ; 

For  equity  is  law,  law  equity, 

The  lesser  is  the  greater’s  enemy, 

And  disadvantaged  aye  begins  the  strife. 

From  her  our  measures,  weights,  and  numbers  come, 
Defined  and  ordered  by  Equality. 

So  do  the  night’s  blind  eye  and  sun’s  bright  orb 
Walk  equal  courses  in  their  yearly  round, 

And  neither  is  embittered  by  defeat.’ 

7.  Prodicus. — We  sometimes  find  the  name  of 
Prodicus  associated  with  that  of  Hippias,  as  like 
him  a somewhat  younger  contemporary  of  Prota- 
goras. Both  taught  at  Athens,  and  both  seem  to 
94 


THE  SOPHISTS 


have  represented  the  same  naturalistic  tendency 
of  thought.  Plato,  it  is  true,  satirises  Prodicus 
as  a rather  pedantic  lecturer  on  the  niceties  of 
language ; but  in  this  instance  we  probably  get  a 
juster  idea  of  his  importance  from  Aristophanes, 
who  describes  him  as  the  most  remarkable  of  the 
natural  philosophers  for  wisdom  and  character, 
and  who  elsewhere  playfully  broaches  a new 
theory  of  evolution  which  is  to  send  Prodicus 
away  howling.  We  also  hear  of  this  Sophist  as 
having  explained  the  origin  of  religion  by  the 
personification  of  natural  objects;  and  Xenophon 
quotes  a famous  apologue  of  his,  called  ‘The 
Choice  of  Heracles/  breathing  the  very  spirit  of 
naturalistic  ethics.  In  particular  it  harmonises 
admirably  with  the  lines  quoted  above  from 
Euripides,  by  showing  that  pleasure  must  either 
be  purchased  by  toil  or  paid  for  by  premature 
exhaustion. 

8.  Natural  Law  as  the  right  of  the  Stronger. 

— It  will  be  remembered  that  Heracleitus  brought 
the  laws  of  the  State  into  connection  with  the 
great  cosmic  law  as  the  source  whence  their 
energy  is  derived.  This  idea  was  afterwards 
taken  up  and  developed  by  the  Stoics,  who  also 
adopted  the  physical  philosophy  of  Heracleitus 
95 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


as  the  foundation  of  their  system.  Now,  as  the 
central  precept  of  Stoicism  is  ‘ follow  Nature’ — 
an  obvious  summary  of  what  ILippias  and  Pro- 
dicus  taught — we  may  legitimately  regard  these 
two  Sophists  as  worthy  successors  in  the  ethical 
field  to  the  great  Ephesian  master. 

Their  appeal  to  nature  was  not,  however,  to 
pass  unchallenged.  If,  as  seems  more  than  pos- 
sible, Protagoras  first  turned  author  in  his  later 
years,  his  proscription  of  physical  studies  and  his 
theory  of  morality  as  a purely  human  product 
may  well  be  interpreted  as  a criticism  of  the 
attempt  made  by  his  younger  rivals  to  found 
morality  on  natural  law,  more  especially  as  their 
ethical  method  was  soon  twisted,  in  a way  that 
must  have  revolted  them,  into  a justification  of 
the  claim  put  forward  on  behalf  of  the  stronger, 
whether  as  states  or  as  individuals,  to  plunder 
and  destroy  the  weaker.  Thucydides  represents 
the  Athenians  as  openly  basing  their  foreign 
policy  on  the  law  of  brute  force ; and  it  has  been 
supposed  that  their  cynical  declarations  in  this 
respect,  as  well  as  the  private  demoralisation 
described  in  their  own  literature,  was  the  result 
of  Sophistic  teaching.  Only  since  the  last  hundred 
years  has  it  been  made  clear,  chiefly  by  the  labours 
of  English  scholars,  that  neither  as  humanists  nor 
96 


THE  SOPHISTS 


as  naturalists  can  the  Sophists  be  justly  charged 
with  any  such  corrupting  influence.  Their  prin- 
ciples were  liable  to  be  misrepresented  or  mis- 
applied, as  are  the  principles  of  any  philosophy, 
and,  we  may  add,  of  any  religion;  but  to  no 
greater  extent  than  has  happened,  for  instance, 
with  the  lessons  of  their  great  opponent,  Plato. 
On  the  whole,  the  new  ideas  they  put  in  cur- 
rency were  distinctly  a gain  to  Greece  and  to  the 
world. 

9.  Gorgias  the  Anti-Naturalist. — Gorgias  of 
Leontini,  a Sicilian  teacher  of  rhetoric,  counts 
among  the  great  Sophists,  while  occupying  a place 
somewhat  apart  from  the  three  above  considered. 
His  principal  contribution  to  philosophy,  how- 
ever, seems  to  associate  him  more  nearly  with 
Protagoras  than  with  the  naturalist  couple.  It 
is,  in  fact,  a bold  attempt  to  get  rid  of  the  idea 
of  nature  altogether  by  showing  that  there  is  no 
such  thing.  Gorgias  conducts  his  campaign 
against  objective  reality  in  the  paradoxical  Greek 
style  by  establishing  three  propositions : (1)  no- 
thing is ; (2)  if  anything  existed  it  could  not  be 
known ; (3)  if  it  could  be  known  the  knowledge 
could  not  be  communicated.  For  what  contra- 
dicts itself  cannot  exist;  and  the  philosophers 
G 97 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


have  proved  with  equal  cogency  that  nature  is 
one  and  many,  finite  and  infinite,  with  and  with- 
out change.  To  be  known,  reality  should  be 
identified  Avith  thought,  Avhereas  some  thoughts 
evidently  represent  nothing  real.  Nor  can  know- 
ledge be  communicated  unless  words  are  identi- 
fied with  the  sensations  they  signify,  which  is  not 
the  fact. 

As  regards  virtue,  Gorgias  taught  that  it  is 
relative  to  the  age  and  social  position  of  the 
person  concerned,  a principle  that  reminds  us 
of  the  short  modern  formula  for  conduct — ‘ My 
station  and  its  duties.’ 

10.  Abolitionism. — It  was  quite  in  consonance 
with  the  humanist  spirit  that  Agathon,  a disciple 
of  Gorgias,  should  make  justice  a result  of  mutual 
agreement  among  men  rather  than  an  image  of 
mathematical  equality;  and  that  another  of  his 
disciples,  Alcidamas,  should  call  the  laws  ‘ the 
bulwark  of  the  city,’  and  philosophy  ‘ the  bulwark 
of  the  laws.’  Yet  this  reverence  for  human  law, 
which  all  over  the  ancient  world  upheld  slavery 
as  a permanent  social  institution,  did  not  prevent 
the  same  Alcidamas  from  declaring  slavery  ille- 
gitimate. ‘ God,’  according  to  him,  ‘ sent  all  men 
to  be  free;  Nature  made  none  a slave.’  That  is 
98 


THE  SOPHISTS 


the  greatest,  most  pregnant  word  of  Greek  practi- 
cal philosophy.  Plato  and  Aristotle  never  got  so 
far ; Aristotle  even  explicitly  denied  that  for  one 
man  to  treat  another  as  an  animated  tool  was 
wrong.  To  accomplish  so  great  an  effort  of 
thought  it  seems  to  have  been  necessary  that 
the  two  principles  which  the  two  rival  schools  of 
Sophisticism  had  opposed  to  one  another  should 
be  combined — that  the  ideal  of  nature  should  be 
recognised  in  the  completed  humanity  of  man. 


99 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


CHAPTER  V 

SOCRATES 

1.  Personality. — Socrates  is  the  greatest  name 
in  the  history  of  philosophy  and  at  the  same 
time  its  most  popular,  most  familiar  figure.  J.  A. 
Symonds  tells  us  how  the  sight  of  a hemlock 
plant  recalled  the  manner  of  his  death  to  a Vene- 
tian gondolier.  The  charm  of  his  personality  is 
unique.  We  think  of  the  Greek  philosophers 
before  and  after  him  as  of  so  many  marble 
statues,  but  of  him  as  a living,  speaking  human 
figure.  Yet  this  figure  is  surrounded  by  a sort  of 
mystery.  It  is  still  a question  for  what  did  he 
live  and  die.  An  enigma  to  his  own  age,  he  re- 
mains an  enigma  to  us.  If  Plato  may  be  trusted, 
he  was  even  an  enigma  to  himself.  From  that 
fame  and  that  obscurity  one  fact  at  least  emerges 
to  begin  with : the  immense  importance  of  the 
personal  factor  in  his  work,  whatever  the  value  of 
that  work  may  turn  out  to  be. 


ioo 


SOCRATES 


2.  Sources  of  Information.— Socrates  himself 
never  wrote  a line  about  philosophy ; and 
although  numerous  reports  of  his  conversation 
have  been  preserved,  it  is  doubtful  whether  any 
two  consecutive  sentences  have  been  put  down 
exactly  as  they  were  uttered.  Nor  can  the 
numerous  busts  bearing  his  name  be  relied  on  as 
faithful  copies  of  an  original  portrait.  It  is  sus- 
pected that  they  merely  reproduce  the  conven- 
tional mask  of  a Silenus  mentioned  by  those  who 
remembered  him,  as  giving  a good  idea  of  the 
sage’s  unprepossessing  features.  We  know  that 
he  was  born  about  469  B.C.,  and  that  by  family 
and  fortune  he  belonged  to  the  poorer  class  of 
Athenian  citizens,  his  father  being  a working 
sculptor  and  his  mother  a midwife.  But  the 
incidents  of  his  early  life  are  buried  in  deep 
obscurity.  It  would  seem  that  he  practised  his 
father’s  trade  for  a time  and  then  abandoned  it  in 
order  to  devote  himself  exclusively  to  the  cultiva- 
tion of  his  own  and  of  other  people’s  intelligence. 
Before  the  age  of  forty  Socrates  must  have  already 
gained  a high  reputation  for  wisdom,  for  we  find 
the  beautiful,  gifted,  and  aristocratic  Alcibiades 
frequenting  his  society  as  a fitting  preparation 
for  filling  the  highest  political  offices.  Some 
ten  years  later  Aristophanes,  in  his  comedy  The 
IOT 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


Clouds,  already  mentioned  as  a brilliant  satire 
on  the  new  culture,  takes  Socrates  as  a type  of 
the  whole  Sophistic  movement,  an  eager  student 
of  physical  science,  a dishonest  atheist,  and  a 
corrupter  of  the  youths  who  come  to  him  for 
instruction. 

Plato,  writing  long  afterwards,  puts  into  the 
mouth  of  Socrates  an  explicit  repudiation  of  ever 
having  been  engaged  in  physical  speculations, 
and  in  this  respect  he  is  fully  borne  out  by  the 
evidence  of  Xenophon,  a fellow-disciple.  We 
may  take  their  word  for  it,  without  excluding  the 
possibility  that  their  master  had  gone  into  such 
studies  enough  to  convince  himself  that  for  him 
at  any  rate  they  would  be  a waste  of  time.  He 
was  no  less  a genuine  Athenian  than  Aristophanes  ; 
and  except  as  a fashionable  craze  for  a short 
period,  physics  never  appealed  to  the  Attic  taste, 
nor  did  it  owe  at  any  time  a single  discovery 
to  Attic  genius.  Like  Protagoras,  Socrates 
devoted  himself  to  human  interests,  but  unlike 
the  great  agnostic  he  shared  the  strong  religious 
faith  which  nowhere  had  struck  such  deep 
roots  as  in  Attic  soil ; and  this  faith  stood 
high  among  the  causes  alienating  him  and  his 
countrymen  from  the  method  of  Hippias  and 
Prodicus. 


102 


SOCRATES 


3.  Not  a Sophist. — On  the  strength  of  his  re- 
putation as  a teacher,  Socrates  was  popularly 
classed  among  the  Sophists.  His  intimate  friends, 
however,  justly  insisted  on  the  fundamental 
difference  separating  him  from  them.  It  con- 
sisted, to  begin  with,  in  the  circumstance  that 
the  Sophists  took  pay  and  that  he  did  not. 
Quite  apart  from  the  direct  evidence  of  Plato  and 
Xenophon,  who  only  knew  him  late  in  life,  we 
may  gather  as  much  from  the  satire  of  Aristo- 
phanes on  his  povert}T-stricken  appearance — a 
fact  absolutely  inconsistent  with  his  making  a 
trade  of  tuition. 

The  profession  of  Sophist  was  indeed  con- 
sidered more  lucrative  than  honourable ; and  an 
Athenian  citizen  may  well  have  considered  it 
beneath  his  dignity  to  barter  wisdom  for  gold, 
especially  in  the  case  of  one’s  own  countrymen, 
whom  it  seemed  a sort  of  natural  duty  to  help 
with  advice.  Protagoras  and  the  others  were 
strangers,  with  something  of  the  discredit 
attaching  to  foreign  adventurers  about  them. 
Socrates  never  left  his  native  city  except  on 
military  duty,  which  he  performed  as  a 
heavy-armed  foot  - soldier  in  three  arduous 
campaigns,  on  one  occasion  saving  the  life  of 
Alcibiades. 


103 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

4.  Irony. — Supposing,  however,  that  the  posi- 
tion of  the  paid  teacher  at  Athens  had  been  not  less 
dignified  than  that  of  a salaried  professor  among 
ourselves,  still  it  was  one  that  Socrates  would  have 
scrupled  to  assume.  It  would  have  been  dis- 
honest on  his  part  to  take  money  for  teaching, 
because  by  his  account  he  had  nothing  to  teach. 
Our  authorities  are  not  agreed  as  to  what  was 
meant  by  this  profession  of  universal  ignorance — 
the  Socratic  irony,  as  it  is  called.  Plato  gives  it 
a strong  religious  colouring.  According  to  his 
story,  an  ardent  admirer  of  Socrates,  one 
Chaerephon,  asked  the  oracle  at  Delphi  was 
there  any  man  wiser  than  he.  The  Pythian 
prophetess  answered  that  there  was  no  man  wiser. 
Much  surprised  at  being  singled  out  for  such  a dis- 
tinction, and  conscious  of  not  in  the  least  deserving 
it,  Socrates  went  about  seeking  for  some  one  wiser 
than  himself,  but  found  none  even  among  those 
whose  reputation  stood  highest.  For  their  pre- 
tended wisdom  invariably  broke  down  under  his 
cross-examination;  while  at  the  same  time  he  could 
not  convince  them  that  they  knew  no  more  than 
he  did.  Then  at  last  the  meaning  of  the  oracle 
became  plain.  Wisdom  belongs  to  the  gods  alone; 
no  man  knows  anything,  and  he  is  wisest  who  has 
come  to  the  consciousness  of  his  own  ignorance. 

104 


SOCRATES 


One  is  sorry  to  question  such  a beautiful  story ; 
but,  like  the  Athenian  celebrities,  it  breaks  down 
under  cross-examination.  Socrates  could  not 
have  got  so  great  a reputation  as  is  here  pre- 
supposed without  some  more  positive  achievement 
than  a general  confession  of  ignorance;  and  as 
depicted  by  Xenophon,  in  this  respect  a much 
more  trustworthy  informant  than  Plato,  it  is  only 
about  natural  philosophy  that  he  professes  to 
know  nothing  or  to  hold  that  nothing  can  be 
known,  the  causes  of  physical  phenomena  being, 
in  his  opinion,  a secret  that  the  gods  have  kept 
to  themselves.  On  the  other  hand,  the  whole 
range  of  human  interests  lies  open  to  man,  and 
among  the  rest  to  himself. 

5.  The  Dialectic  Method. — In  limiting  philo- 
sophy to  the  study  of  man,  Socrates  agrees  with 
Protagoras,  except  that  he  approaches  the  subject 
from  a religious  rather  than  from  an  agnostic  point 
of  view.  The  distinctive  originality  of  the  Athenian 
thinker  lies  in  his  creation  of  a new  method. 
Socrates  figures  in  the  history  of  philosophy  before 
all  things  as  the  founder  of  logic,  the  first  to  attempt 
an  organisation  of  reason  as  such.  Reasoning  of 
course  is  as  old  as  language,  in  a way  it  is  as  old 
as  conscious  life;  the  behaviour  of  the  most  rudi- 

105 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


mentary  animals  is  guided  by  their  experience  of 
the  past.  And  long  before  Socrates  the  Greeks 
had  learned  to  distinguish  this  power  from  all  the 
lower  manifestations  of  consciousness,  to  look  on 
it  as  constituting  their  own  superiority  to  the 
barbarians — the  secret  also  of  one  man’s  superi- 
ority to  another  in  the  State.  Then  came  philo- 
sophy, and  raised  reason  to  a higher  pinnacle 
still  as  the  cause  alike  of  physical  order  and  of 
civil  law,  the  ruling  power  of  the  world.  As  such, 
Anaxagoras  had  introduced  it  to  Athens  under  the 
name  of  Nous — the  one  Greek  word  still  known  to 
the  most  ignorant  sporting  man  among  ourselves. 

Another  Greek  word  for  reason,  the  one  used 
by  Heracleitus,  is  logos,  whence  comes  our  word 
logic,  which  means  the  science  of  reasoning,  the 
analysis  of  its  operations,  the  systematic  exposi- 
tion of  the  process  by  which  conception,  judg- 
ment, and  inference,  are  successfully  carried  on. 
Socrates  did  not  create  the  science  of  logic — that 
was  an  achievement  reserved  for  his  successor, 
Aristotle — but  without  his  pioneer  work  it  could 
not  have  been  created.  How  much  he  actually 
did  we  cannot  tell  with  certainty,  for  Xenophon, 
to  whom  our  most  trustworthy  information  is 
due,  had  but  a feeble  hold  on  pure  theory,  and 
Plato’s  dramatic  presentation  of  the  old  master 
106 


SOCRATES 


gives  such  an  immense  extension  to  his  method 
that  the  original  nucleus  cannot  be  isolated  from 
subsequent  accretions. 

6.  Definition. — We  know  on  the  authority  of 
Aristotle,  confirmed  by  the  detailed  statements 
of  Xenophon,  that  Socrates  first  introduced  the 
methods  of  definition  and  induction.  That  is,  he 
took  some  abstract  term,  by  preference  the  name 
of  a virtue  or  vice,  such  as  Courage  or  Justice, 
Cowardice  or  Injustice,  and  by  comparing  together 
a number  of  concrete  instances  where  those 
qualities  were  exhibited,  sought  to  arrive  at  a 
general  notion  of  what  the  word  meant,  of  what 
we  now  call  its  connotation.  According  to  him, 
such  a procedure  was  necessary  in  order  that 
discussions  on  subjects  of  general  interest  might 
be  carried  on  in  a friendly  and  profitable  manner. 
And  not  only  were  definitions  necessary  in  order 
that  people  might  know  what  they  were  talking 
about,  but  the  definitions  themselves  were  to  be 
arrived  at  as  the  result  of  a search  jointly  under- 
taken by  the  whole  company,  everybody  present 
helping  to  the  best  of  his  ability  in  the  hunt 
after  truth.  Socrates  in  fact  applied  the  demo- 
cratic tradition  of  Athens  to  scientific  inquiry, 
not  speaking  with  authority  as  the  Sophists,  but 
107 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


as  professing  to  know  no  more  than  any  one  else ; 
more  concerned  to  ask  questions  than  to  answer 
them ; always  on  the  look-out  for  new  facts  and 
new  ideas.  His  method  reflected  both  the  de- 
liberations of  the  sovereign  Assembly  and  the 
cross  - examination  to  which  defendants  could 
subject  their  prosecutors  in  the  popular  law- 
courts. 

Of  course  Athens,  even  more  than  other  Greek 
cities,  abounded  in  persons  having  a good  conceit 
of  themselves ; and  pretenders  to  universal  know- 
ledge found  a merciless  critic  in  the  poorly-dressed 
old  man  with  the  thick  lips  and  flat,  turned-up 
nose  who,  under  the  appearance  of  reverence  for 
their  superior  wisdom  and  an  insatiable  thirst 
for  information,  by  a series  of  searching  questions 
speedily  involved  the  pontifical  charlatan  in  a 
mesh  of  hopeless  self-contradiction.  Such  scenes 
no  doubt  suggested  to  Plato  his  imposing  picture 
of  Socrates  as  a divinely-commissioned  prophet 
going  about  to  convince  the  world  of  universal 
and  hopeless  ignorance,  as  prophets  of  another 
school  go  about  to  convince  it  of  universal 
depravity.  But  the  picture  as  it  stands  is  not 
historical;  and  the  real  prophet  had  a message 
of  reasoned  truth  rather  than  of  reasoned  nescience 
to  deliver. 

108 


SOCRATES 


7.  Division.  — More  important  even  than 
Definition  to  clear  thinking  is  the  logical  process 
of  Division — the  distribution  of  every  subject 
discussed  under  a number  of  distinct  headings. 
Descartes,  the  founder  of  modern  French  philo- 
sophy, mentions  the  plan  of  breaking  up  difficulties 
into  the  greatest  possible  number  of  parts  as  a 
first  step  to  discovering  their  solution;  and  the 
same  method  was  practised  by  Socrates  two 
thousand  years  before  him.  If,  for  instance,  he 
were  discussing  the  comparative  claims  of  two 
rival  statesmen  to  the  name  of  a good  citizen  he 
would  bring  down  the  question  to  a specific 
estimate  of  their  respective  services  in  the  various 
departments  of  political  activity.  A good  citizen 
increases  the  resources  of  the  State,  defeats  the 
enemy  in  war,  wins  allies  by  diplomacy,  appeases 
intestine  discords  by  his  eloquence. 

8.  Reasoning.  — Definition  and  division  are 
spoken  of  in  logic  as  processes  subsidiary  to 
Inference — that  is  the  discovery  of  new  truths  as 
necessary  consequences  of  the  truths  we  already 
know.  Socrates  was  fully  alive  to  this  character- 
istic property  of  reasoning,  and  illustrated  it  in 
his  conversations  by  starting  from  principles 
about  which  he  and  his  interlocutor  were  agreed. 

109 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


Unfortunately  Xenophon,  on  account  of  his  very 
narrow  range  of  interests,  does  not  quote  examples 
enough  to  show  how  Socrates  habitually  worked 
out  his  conclusions.  But  he  gives  us  the  valuable 
information  that  no  man  whom  he  ever  knew 
was  so  successful  in  gaining  the  assent  of  his 
hearers — a fact  quite  inconsistent  with  Plato’s 
account  of  his  hero  as  an  exasperating  personage, 
reducing  every  one  to  shame  if  not  to  confession 
by  his  dialectical  skill. 

9.  Final  Causes.  — As  it  happens,  the  most 
celebrated  instance  of  Socratic  reasoning  is  one 
that  modern  science  has  shown  to  be  much  less 
convincing  than  used  to  be  imagined.  This  is  the 
well-known  Theistic  argument  from  design.  As 
the  structure  of  the  human  body  exhibits  an 
adaptation  of  means  to  ends  such  as  we  find  in 
the  works  of  skilful  artificers,  the  existence  of  a 
powerful,  intelligent,  and  benevolent  Being  is 
assumed  as  necessary  to  explain  its  origin. 
Whatever  the  argument  may  be  worth,  the  credit 
of  having  discovered  it  clearly  belongs  to  Socrates, 
for  Anaxagoras,  who  comes  nearest  to  him  as  a 
Theistic  philosopher,  conceived  his  Nous  as  work- 
ing by  mechanical  impulse,  not  by  design.  And 
if  there  is  any  truth  in  the  story  of  the  oracle 
1 10 


SOCRATES 


declaring  him  to  be  the  wisest  of  men,  we  may 
suppose  that  it  was  due  to  the  impression  made 
on  the  Delphic  authorities  by  his  fame  as  the 
contributor  of  a new  reason  for  believing  in  the 
gods  at  a time  when  philosophers  in  general  passed 
for  being  atheists.  As  to  the  Socratic  profession 
of  ignorance,  we  are  now  in  a better  position  to 
appreciate  its  value.  It  is  a paradoxical  way  of 
saying  that  the  logician  as  such  need  know 
nothing  that  commonly  passes  for  knowledge. 
By  exposing  the  flaws  in  other  people’s  theories 
he  may  prove  that  they  are  as  ignorant  as  he  is 
himself.  Or  again,  by  unfolding  the  implications 
of  the  facts  supplied  to  him  by  other  people, 
while  securing  their  assent  to  every  step  in  the 
chain  of  inference,  he  may  make  it  seem  as  if  the 
result  obtained  did  as  much  credit  to  their  wisdom 
as  to  his  own.  This  is  the  method  constantly 
followed  by  the  Platonic  Socrates,  who  in  this 
respect  may  reproduce  the  spirit  of  the  master 
more  faithfully  than  Xenophon’s  photographic 
illustrations. 

10.  Socrates  as  a Moral  Reformer.  — While 

Socrates  interests  us  chiefly  as  the  creator  of 
logical  method,  the  philosopher  himself  only 
valued  that  method  as  an  instrument  of  moral 


in 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


reformation.  As  an  Athenian  citizen  he  took  a 
profound  personal  interest  in  the  good  govern- 
ment of  his  country;  and  this  patriotic  motive 
was  alone  sufficient  to  distinguish  him  from  the 
Sophists,  who  as  paid  teachers  and  foreigners 
could  not  be  actuated  by  the  same  absorbing 
passion  for  the  public  good.  At  the  same  time 
it  is  clear  that  their  comparative  detachment 
and  wide  range  of  culture  gave  their  ethical 
ideas  a reach,  an  originality,  and  an  emancipating 
power  that  his  did  not  possess.  The  Humanism 
of  Protagoras  was  pregnant  with  hopes  of 
a higher  civilisation  than  Greece  had  reached. 
The  Naturalism  of  Hippias  and  Prodicus  em- 
bodied a reaction  against  perverted  appetites 
from  which  Greece  in  less  civilised  ages  had  been 
free. 

11.  Utilitarianism. — In  accordance  with  the 
systematising  bent  of  his  genius,  Socrates  seems 
to  have  sought  for  a single  principle  in  ethics, 
and  to  have  found  it  provisionally  in  the  idea  of 
utility ; that  is  to  say  he  introduced  the  method 
of  estimating  the  morality  of  actions  neither  by 
public  opinion  nor  by  individual  taste,  but  by 
their  calculable  consequences.  We  must  not 
suppose,  however,  that  his  attempts  in  this  direc- 
1 12 


SOCRATES 


tion  amounted  to  an  anticipation  of  utilitarianism 
in  the  modern  sense. 

As  reported  by  Xenophon,  he  never  commits 
himself  to  the  assertion  that  pleasure  and  the 
absence  of  pain  are  the  only  desirable  things. 
Nor,  assuming  that  we  have  discovered  in  what 
utility  consists — whether  pleasurableness  or  any- 
thing else  — does  Socrates  ever  make  it  clear 
whether  the  conduct  of  the  individual  is  to  be 
determined  by  regard  for  his  own  advantage,  or 
for  the  advantage  of  the  community  to  which  he 
belongs,  or  for  that  of  the  whole  human  race. 
That  these  respective  claims  might,  apparently  at 
least,  collide  was  a difficulty  first  seriously 
discussed  in  all  its  bearings  by  Plato,  who  only 
hoped  to  solve  it  by  revolutionising  public  opinion, 
society,  and  religion.  Socrates  habitually  appeals 
to  self-interest,  as  if  it  were  the  only  available 
motive;  but  he  seems  at  the  same  time  to  be 
persuaded  that  the  happiness  of  the  citizen  is  in 
the  long  run  identified  with  the  happiness  of 
the  State.  That,  in  fact,  was  not  his  question, 
but  rather  the  question  how  an  art  of  social  life 
could  be  constructed  comparable  for  systematic 
completeness  to  the  industrial  arts  of  which 
a city  like  Athens  offered  such  multifarious 
examples. 

H 1 13 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

12.  The  Lessons  of  Town  Life.— Aristophanes 
could  not  see  the  soul  of  Socrates,  but  he  has 
taken  a snapshot  of  the  philosopher  as  he  appeared 
to  the  man  in  the  street,  the  accuracy  of  which  is 
vouched  for  by  Plato,  ‘ stalking  about  like  a peli- 
can and  rolling  his  eyes.’  Nothing  escaped  those 
curious  eyes,  as  nothing  escaped  Mr.  Gladstone’s, 
and  their  inquisitiveness  found  a rich  harvest  in  a 
city  where  every  calling  was  taught  and  practised 
with  complete  publicity.  Now  what  struck 
Socrates  chiefly  was  the  high  value  set  on  expert 
attainments,  and  the  ready  obedience  given  to 
professional  trainers  wherever  a special  technique 
had  come  to  be  recognised,  as  in  the  army  and 
navy,  the  theatre,  the  artist’s  studio,  or  the 
gymnasium,  compared  with  the  haphazard 
methods  of  politics,  of  the  higher  education, 
of  social  intimacies,  of  pleasure-seeking  among  the 
leisured  classes.  That  any  one  should  follow  for 
his  personal  satisfaction  a line  of  conduct  which 
would  not  be  tolerated  for  a day  in  the  hired 
occupants  of  a responsible  office,  seemed  to  the 
philosopher  a revolting  paradox.  Some  may  call 
this  a bourgeois  or  Philistine  morality.  But  what 
makes  those  names  terms  of  reproach  is  their 
association  with  a slavish  deference  to  custom 
and  tradition.  Socratic  morality,  by  reducing 
114 


SOCRATES 


life  to  a fine  art,  discards  convention  and  opens 
possibilities  of  endless  improvement. 

13.  Virtue  as  Knowledge. — Greek  philosophy 
delighted  in  paradoxes,  and  Socrates  was  credited 
with  two  such : first,  the  paradox  of  ignorance, 
which  as  we  saw  expressed  in  a picturesque  way 
the  discovery  of  fact  by  talking  things  over 
methodically, — the  evolution  by  logical  processes 
of  the  unknown  into  the  known ; and  secondly,  the 
paradox,  that  virtue  is  identical  with  knowledge, 
so  that  he  who  has  the  right  theory  of  conduct 
necessarily  does  what  is  right.  Every  one,  said 
Socrates,  does  what  he  thinks  is  for  his  good ; if 
he  does  wrong  that  only  proves  that  he  is  mis- 
taken in  his  belief  and  ought  to  be  taught  better. 
Such  an  idea  is  closely  connected  with  the  inter- 
pretation of  morality  as  an  art : the  artist  has  in 
fact  been  defined  as  one  who  does  his  best.  And 
it  might  be  said  that  the  man  who  scamps  his 
work  has  mistaken  beliefs  about  the  good  of 
making  money  or  the  good  of  saving  time.  The 
question  ends  by  becoming  a verbal  one.  If  my 
friend  tells  me  that  he  does  what  he  knows  is 
bad  for  him,  and  I observe  that,  if  he  really  knew 
that,  he  would  not  do  it,  we  are  evidently  not 
using  the  word  ‘ know  ’ in  the  same  sense.  Or  to 
US 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


put  it  somewhat  differently,  the  Socratic  philo- 
sophy which  began  as  ultra -intellectualism  ends  in 
what  would  now  be  called  ultra-pragmatism. 
Belief  does  not  lead  to  practice ; it  is  practice  and 
nothing  else. 

14.  The  Divine  Voice. — Socrates  did  not  suc- 
ceed in  reducing  his  own  life  to  a work  of  art 
capable  of  being  explained  and  justified  as  the 
expression  of  right  theory  in  right  practice.  A 
place  had  to  be  left  for  the  free  play  of  unaccount- 
able instincts  or  intuitions  warning  him  without 
a reason  that  certain  actions  would  have  bad 
results.  He  interpreted  these  inward  monitions 
as  a divine  voice  accompanying  him  through  life. 
By  a misinterpretation  which  goes  back  to  his 
own  time  this  voice  has  often  been  described  as  a 
daemon  or  personal  spirit.  More  recently  it  has 
been  identified  with  conscience.  But  this  view 
is  inconsistent  with  the  circumstance,  mentioned 
by  Plato,  that  the  monitor  always  intervened  to 
forbid,  never  to  give  a positive  command.  Con- 
science both  forbids  and  commands ; while  in 
each  instance  its  promptings  can  be  referred  to 
the  known  laws  of  moral  obligation. 

15.  The  Hero  as  a Philosopher. — With  Socrates 

116 


SOCRATES 


himself  to  know  the  right  and  to  do  it  were  the 
same  thing,  and  no  doubt  it  was  from  a conviction 
that  what  was  possible  to  him  was  equally  possible 
to  all  men  that  he  identified  virtue  with  knowledge. 
For  the  unflinching  performance  of  duty  at  all 
costs  he  is,  so  far  as  our  information  goes,  with- 
out an  equal  in  the  ancient  world.  His  services 
as  a soldier  in  the  field  have  been  already  men- 
tioned. His  conduct  as  a citizen  at  home  is 
marked  by  still  greater  fortitude.  It  was  his 
custom — at  the  bidding  as  he  declared  of  the 
divine  monitor — to  abstain  from  all  political 
activity.  But  there  came  a moment  when  a 
civic  duty,  accidentally  imposed  on  the  philo- 
sopher, showed  of  what  mettle  he  was  made. 
Athens  had  won  her  last  great  victory  over  a 
Peloponnesian  fleet  at  Arginusee.  But  to  her 
people  the  victory  became  an  occasion  for  mourn- 
ing and  indignation,  because  through  the  neglect, 
as  was  alleged,  of  the  admirals  a number  of 
sailors  had  been  left  to  perish  in  the  waves,  and 
what  seemed  still  worse,  the  bodies  of  the  dead 
were  not  picked  up  and  brought  home  for  burial. 
It  was,  therefore,  resolved  that  the  admirals  who 
returned  home,  six  in  number,  should  be  tried  on 
this  charge.  So  far  no  objection  could  be  taken 
to  the  proceedings.  The  case  was  altered  when 
ii  7 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


the  Senate  accepted  a resolution  decreeing  that 
the  guilt  or  innocence  of  the  accused  parties 
should  be  submitted  to  a direct  vote  of  the  whole 
people  instead  of  to  a regular  sworn  jury,  that 
they  should  not  be  heard  in  their  own  defence, 
and  that  their  cases  should  be  decided  in  a batch 
instead  of  being  submitted  one  by  one  to  the 
popular  judgment,  as  was  prescribed  by  law. 
At  first  the  Prytanes,  a sort  of  municipal  Board 
whose  business  it  was  to  preside  over  the  delibera- 
tions of  the  Sovereign  Assembly,  refused  to 
commit  the  illegality  of  putting  the  question  to 
the  vote,  but  eventually  all,  with  a single  excep- 
tion, yielded  to  the  clamour  of  the  multitude. 
That  solitary  representative  of  law  and  justice 
was  Socrates,  whom  the  chances  of  the  lot  had 
enrolled  among  the  Prytanes  of  that  day.  His 
protest  could  not  be  overcome  by  threats  of  im- 
prisonment and  death,  but  being  eventually 
passed  over,  it  was  powerless  to  save  the  unfortun- 
ate victors  of  Arginusse  from  condemnation  and 
execution. 

Two  years  after  these  events  the  democracy 
that  had  so  abused  its  power  was  abolished  by  a 
foreign  conqueror,  and  an  oligarchy  of  thirty 
members  imposed  on  Athens.  These  men  soon 
inaugurated  a reign  of  terror,  killing  and  plunder- 
118 


SOCRATES 


ing  to  their  heart’s  content.  Within  the  city  one 
voice  alone  was  raised  in  fearless  criticism  of  their 
insane  violence,  this  time  also  the  voice  of  Socrates. 
Critias,  the  leader  of  the  terrorists,  had  been  his 
pupil  and  was  content  to  let  the  old  philosopher 
off  with  a private  warning  to  hold  his  tongue. 

Socrates  also  braved  an  insidious  attempt 
of  the  thirty  to  make  him  an  accomplice 
in  their  crimes.  A certain  Leon  of  Salamis, 
whose  only  offence  was  his  wealth,  had  been 
marked  out  by  them  for  proscription.  Five 
citizens,  of  whom  Socrates  was  one,  received 
orders  to  arrest  this  man  and  bring  him  over  to 
be  executed.  The  other  four  went  on  the  dis- 
graceful errand ; he  remained  at  home. 

16.  Trial  and  Death  of  Socrates. — It  was  re- 
served for  the  restored  democracy  to  commit  a 
crime  from  which  even  the  cruel  and  unscrupu- 
lous oligarchs  had  recoiled.  In  the  year  399  B.c. 
Socrates  was  prosecuted  on  a capital  charge 
before  the  popular  tribunal  by  Anytus,  a demo- 
cratic politician,  Lycon,  a public  speaker,  and 
Meletus,  a poet.  They  accused  him  of  denying 
the  gods  whom  the  State  acknowledged,  of  intro- 
ducing new  gods  whom  the  State  did  not  acknow- 
ledge, and  of  being  a corrupter  of  youth.  In 
119 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


short,  they  represented  the  greatest  and  purest 
religious  teacher  Greece  had  ever  seen  of  being  an 
immoral  and  superstitious  atheist. 

Athens,  as  has  already  been  mentioned,  was  dis- 
tinguished above  all  other  Greek  cities  for 
intolerant  bigotry.  So  far  the  victims  of  perse- 
cution had  been  philosophers  whose  ideas  were 
irreconcilable  with  the  current  mythology,  such 
as  Anaxagoras  and  Protagoras,  or  who  openly 
criticised  it,  such  as  Diagoras  of  Melos.  But  what 
makes  the  habit  of  punishing  people  for  their 
opinions  so  peculiarly  poisonous  is  that  sooner  or 
later  it  victimises  originality  of  every  kind,  even 
the  originality  that  finds  new  arguments  for  old 
beliefs.  [ Socrates  incurred  the  suspicion  of  athe- 
ism simply  because  he  met  the  atheists  on  their 
own  ground,  encountering  reason  with  reason, 
and  because  he  betrayed  a thorough  acquaintance 
with  the  theories  he  set  himself  to  refute.  To 
describe  his  divinely  sent  warnings  as  a new- 
fangled religion  was  of  course  a misconception 
that  a few  words  of  explanation  would  dispel. 

A pamphleteer  who  renewed  the  attack  on 
Socrates  some  years  after  his  death  supported  the 
charge  of  corrupting  youth  by  the  examples  of 
Alcibiades  and  Critias.  Both  had  been  his  pupils, 
and  both  had  turned  out  badly ; but  as  Xenophon 


120 


SOCRATES 


truly  observes,  whatever  influence  Socrates  exer- 
cised over  them  was  used  to  keep  them  straight, 
not  to  lead  them  astray. 

Plato’s  account  of  his  master’s  trial  and  death 
is  a historical  romance ; hut  the  main  facts  may 
be  taken  as  faithfully  related.  The  court  which 
sat  in  judgment  on  Socrates  consisted  of  501 
citizens  chosen  by  lot.  It  seems  to  have  made  a 
bad  impression  on  many  of  these  persons  that  the 
old  philosopher  appealed  to  their  reason  instead 
of  humbly  throwing  himself  on  their  mercy, 
which  in  Xenophon’s  opinion  would  have  insured 
his  acquittal.  Condemned  by  a small  majority, 
and  invited  to  propose  a lighter  penalty  than 
the  capital  sentence  demanded  by  his  accuser, 
Socrates  began  by  suggesting  that  maintenance 
at  the  public  expense  in  the  Prytaneum  would  be 
the  proper  recompense  for  the  services  he  had 
rendered  to  the  State.  Then,  waiving  this  claim 
as  impracticable,  he  offered  to  pay  a fine  of  thirty 
minae  (about  £122),  as  his  friends  would  be 
willing  to  make  up  that  much  money  among 
them.  On  a second  vote  the  fearless  old  man  was 
condemned  to  death,  eighty  of  those  who  had 
pronounced  him  innocent  now  going  over  to  the 
side  of  the  majority. 

It  so  happened  that  the  condemnation  fell  at  a 

121 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


time  when,  owing  to  the  absence  of  a sacred 
mission  sent  to  Delos,  no  capital  sentence  could  be 
carried  out  at  Athens.  This  gave  a respite  of 
thirty  days  to  Socrates,  who,  had  he  chosen, 
might  have  profited  by  the  delay  to  make  his 
escape  from  prison.  Everything  had  in  fact 
been  arranged  for  the  purpose  by  his  friends,  but 
he  refused  to  avail  himself  of  their  offers,  on  the 
ground  that  it  would  have  involved  disobedience 
to  the  laws.  Accordingly  on  the  expiration  of  the 
fatal  term,  after  a last  conversation  with  his 
followers,  Socrates  cheerfully  met  death  in  the 
way  humanely  prescribed  at  Athens,  by  swallow- 
ing a draught  of  hemlock. 

We  owe  it  to  the  method  and  the  example  of 
this  heroic  sage,  first,  that  philosophy  has  ever 
since  centred  in  the  study  of  mind  rather  than 
in  the  study  of  matter ; and  also  that  it  has  been 
understood  to  demand,  so  far  as  human  frailty 
permits,  a realisation  in  its  teachers’  lives  of  the 
ideal  that  their  moral  theories  set  up.  Hence 
the  later  schools  of  Greek  philosophy,  while  more 
largely  indebted  to  the  Ionian  cosmologists  and  to 
the  Sophists  than  to  Socrates  for  their  speculative 
principles,  exhibit  in  the  character  and  attitude  of 
their  founders  and  chief  representatives  the  unmis- 
takable impress  of  his  commanding  personality. 

122 


WORKS  BEARING  ON  EARLY  GREEK 
PHILOSOPHY 


Grote,  History  of  Greece , chapters  xvi.,  lxvii.,  and  lxviii. 

— — Plato,  chapters  i.  and  ii. 

Zeller,  Ed.,  Die  Philosophic  der  Griechen,  Bd.  I.,  5te  Auflage 
(1892),  and  Bd.  ii.,  1.  4to  Auflage,  1-232  (1889). 
Tannery,  Paul,  Pour  I’Histoire  de  la  Science  Hellene 
(1887). 

Burnet,  John,  Parly  Greek  Philosophy  (1892). 1 
Milhaud,  Gaston,  La  Science  Grecgue  (1893). 

Les  Philosophes  Geometres  de  la  Gr'ece  (1900). 

Gomperz,  Th.,  The  Greek  Thinkers , vol.  i.  Translated  by 
Laurie  Magnus  (1896). 

Doring,  A.,  Die  Lehre  des  Sokrates  (1896). 

Geschichte  der  griechischen  Philosophic,  I.  1-427 

(1903). 

Benn,  A.  W.,  The  Philosophy  of  Greece,  chapters  i.-vi. 
(1898). 

Piat,  C.,  Socrate  (1900). 

Diels,  H.,  Fragmente  der  Vorsokratiker,  Band  I.  (1906). 

i A second  edition,  entirely  rewritten,  of  this  important  work  has  just 
appeared  (July  1908). 


INDEX 


Abdera,  67,  90. 

Abolitionism,  98. 

Acragas,  58. 

Agathon,  98. 

Alcibiades,  101,  120. 

Alcidamas,  98. 

Anaxagoras,  73  sqq.,  84,  110,  120. 
Anaximander,  18  sqq.,  34. 
Anaximenes.  21  sqq.,  33,  36,  80. 
Antithesis,  34. 

Arginusse,  117. 

Aristophanes,  81,  95,  101,  102, 
103. 

Aristotle,  15,  79,  87,  99,  107. 
Aspasia,  75. 

Athens,  73  sqq,,  80  sqq.,  102  sqq., 
108,  120. 

Atomism,  65  sqq. 

Bacon,  Francis,  1,  23,  36. 

Chthonian  and  Olympian  deities, 
25,  45. 

Clouds,  The,  81,  101  sq. 
Copernicus,  33. 

Critias,  119,  120. 

Definition,  107. 

Democritus,  69  sqq, 

Descartes,  109. 


Diagoras  of  Melos,  120. 

Dialectic  method,  105  sqq. 
Diogenes  of  Apollonia,  80  sq. 

Education  at  Athens,  83  sq.,  87. 
Elea,  47. 

Empedocles,  57  sqq. 

Euripides,  74,  94. 

Evolution,  20,  79. 

Flux,  the,  38  sqq. 

Gladstone,  W.  E.,  2, 114. 

Gods  of  Greece,  6,  26  sq. 

Gorgias,  97  sq. 

Heracleitus,  35  sqq.,  47,  54,  62, 
95. 

Hesiod,  6,  17,  27. 

Hippias  of  Elis,  93  sq. , 96,  102, 
112. 

Homer,  6,  7,  27,  38,  86. 
Humanism,  91  sqq.,  112. 

Huxley,  T.  II.,  44. 

Hybris,  11. 

IONIANS,  14. 

Law,  reign  of,  12. 

Leucippus,  67  sq. 

Logos,  the,  40  sqq. , 106. 

125 


EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 


Materialism,  22,  60,  70. 
Melissus,  64. 

Miletus,  14. 

Mythology,  Greek,  6. 

Naturalism,  93  sqq. 

Nous,  77  sqq.,  106. 

Orphicism,  39,  44,  60,  71. 

Parmenides,  46  sqq.,  78. 

Pericles,  74,  75,  90. 

Plieidias,  75. 

Philosophy,  meaning  of,  1,  69  sq. 
Plato,  22,  44,  47,  72,  84,  91,  92, 
95,  99,  100,  108,  110,  113,  121. 
Prodicus,  94  sq.,  102,  112. 
Protagoras,  89  sqq.,  96,  102,  103. 
Pythagoras  of  Samos,  4,  30  sqq., 
47. 

Pythagorean  school,  29  sqq.,  52. 

Reasoning,  109  sq. 

Religion,  Greek,  4 sqq. , 24  sqq. 


Revivalism  in  Greece,  28. 
Rhetoric,  teaching  of,  85  sqq. 

Sages,  the  Seven,  8 sqq. 
Salvationism  in  Greece,  28. 
Socrates,  100  sqq. 

Sophists,  the,  87  sqq.,  103,  112. 
Sophrosyne,  10  sq.,  29,  59. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  2,  79. 

Stoics,  41,  95. 

Thales,  14  sqq.,  33. 

Thucydides,  34,  96. 

Utilitarianism,  112  sq. 

Virtue  as  knowledge,  115  sq. 

Xenophanes,  44  sqq. 

Xenophon,  95,  102,  105,  106,  107, 
110,  113, 120,  121. 

Zeno  of  Elea,  55  sq. 


Printed  by  T.  and  A.  Constaulk,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press 


ST'™"* 


